AeroMad, you are absolutely right. But "The real trick is to loose less money than the competition" did sound a bit to negative to my ears, so I put it somewhat more optimistic...
As we are at it, given Flybe's complaints about fuel costs, I was wondering the other day if the E175 purchase makes sense from today's perspective - the E175 consumes more fuel than the Q400 yet Flybe still do not seem to operate too many long routes that really require the E175s speed compared to the Q400. So the E175 appears to be a bit of a luxury (unless the Q400 were operating at 100 per cent loads on the routes on which they have been replaced by E175s that offers ten more seats).