seems wasteful - I can remember Ryanair finding they had a similar situation at Stansted a few years back and looked around for a short route that they could be pretty sure wouldn't suffer delays to fill the time in and came up with Esbjerg mid -afternoon- God knows how we larfed!!!
Of course there were enough Danish pig farmers & their wives who fancied a quick trip to London rather than a long drive to Copenhagen to get some pretty good loads............ aircraft utilised, bank balance increased, more happy customers.......
You'd have thought it was worth sticking in a flight to somewhere in NW Europe just to see what happens