An airline like BA generally speaking operate A-B-A or maybe A-B-C-B-A (I'm thiking of Australia here). Many of their routes are operated several times a day. If the bookings, in both directions A-B and B-A are low and if the next flight on the same route has sufficient seats to take everyone then a cancellation can occur and passengers are then reaccomodated on the later flight. But passengers are not the only consideration. There's a lot of freight moved in the belly of aircraft and it can be profitable to operate a flight with a very low passenger load factor if there is a good cargo load.
I get your point but there are countless Easyjet routes, particularly at the bigger bases, that operate at high frequency.
You are correct however, that there are some W patterns and triangles operated in certain parts of the network and the BOH-VLC will definitely have been an example of this.