As someone who lives locally and has flown in and out of MME on 16 occasions this year (8 trips) and has another 3 trips already booked, I desperately want the airport to thrive, if only for the selfish reason that I don't want to travel to Newcastle or Leeds/Bradford for my work trips.
With the airport losing money, Peel has clearly has to diversify to try and increase income. Whether the government funding to develop a freight terminal comes off or not, Peel has to attract more conventional flights from the airport.
Therefore they really have 4 options:
1) Charter flights
2) Business flights into a European hub
3) Business flights into specialist business airports
4) Low cost carriers
All of the above have to be done alongside protecting the KLM business, without which MME could well collapse. The only way to grow the business in the medium term appears to grow the charter flight business. LCCs will just demand tiny landing fees and flights to Frankfurt (which would be great for me) would just cut into KLM's existing business. I am no expert on business specific flights but others like Aberdeen would be interesting but not generate much revenue in terms of fees or spend in the shops.
I applaud the thrust of onyxcrowle's earlier post and his positive attitude. A successful local airport means only good things for the local economy. This is why the Ibiza and Bourgas news should be welcomed by all.
As an observation, I was in Darlington town centre over the weekend. Many travel agents had small promotions in their windows but I didn't notice one promoting the fact that customers could actually fly from an airport that was 10 minutes drive away.