It clearly is very difficult to attract new routes to the airport, although there are small signs of a slight upturn with Ibiza and Bulgaria next year. The Jersey flight has been on a Embraer 170, rather than the Dash 8 so far, don't know if that is an indication of an increase in demand?
You also have to look at how successful the neighbours appear to be. Leeds has had a successful month in May and Newcastle too - also look at the passenger figures from Newcastle on the 2 scheduled routes from MME - Amsterdam and Aberdeen both up by over 30% on last year..must make it very difficult to retain the passengers on the flights from MME with such competition - although they do seem to hold up Aberdeen only had 60 passenegrs less than last year, although Amsterdam was down by 4%. Might be a bit conspiracy theory but has Newcastle deliberatly targeted these routes to 'hurt' the fights from MME? (Aberdeen has always had more passengers from MME so why didn't Eastern start extra flights from here?)
I just don't know if they should scrap the £6 fee and get Ryanair in,if no one else is willing, and get people back to flying from MME!