Capt Horrendous. There was no battle between Flybe, and Euromanx. Flybe used its superior financial position to undercut Euromanx for 4 months, prior to launching services on Euromanx's prime routes of Manchester and Liverpool. Flybe knew the vulnerability of Euromanx's situation, and set out to drive it out of business. The rest is history. The unforeseen circumstance of this was that Euromanx operated the only business connection to London. Forget Gatwick, it is not a business connection to London, just as Kiddlington is not, and never will be a London airport. Once Euromanx had gone, the island lost its only convenient connection to the financial capital of Europe. What a signal to send to the general business community. Effectively, the Isle of Man was turning off its own life-support machine. Do you really think Flybe cared? No. It now had the opportunity to conduct nothing but a shakedown on its monopoly routes. Trust me, I know. Having flown on Flybe for business(paid for by myself), and leisure.
Hansol. The rose-tinted spectacle times you speak of during Manx Airlines times. Although they may not have been perfect. Maybe people hark back to the times when Manx Airlines employed about a 1000 people locally. Or, who every year took on local school leavers as engineering apprenticees. Or, maybe they wish they could arrive at the check-in desk early and be transferred to a more convenient flight, free of charge. Or, maybe it's the fact that what is now a hotel used to be Manx Airlines, administration department. As for Euromanx, who are you to say they needed to go? Yes the boss didn't know an aeroplane from a paper plane. But do you think waking up in the morning to no job, and no pay was fun? And, "needed to go"?
I truly hope that the island is able to accommodate both Flybe, and EasyJet, but going on the history of the last few years, some sort of reduction of choice of routes of the island seems likely. The Summer timetables will be a good barometer of the state of aviation on the island.