Incidentally, you mention the (very relevant) example of BA and Sun-Air. Are we entirely sure that BA (!) would not contemplate signing a franchise deal to feed secondary European points into London on a purely point-to-point basis, if Stobart/RE are waving chequebooks around?
BA has scaled down franchising extremely. My understanding is that Sun Air is a bit of a special case.
I'm surprised that nobody noticed that ch-aviation.com reported early yesterday that the SEN-FMO would operate under the Aer Lingus Regional brand, although they didn't quote any source for that statement.
The online version of the local Muenster newspaper ran a poorly researched piece on the London flights from Muenster (more or less rumours from various pieced together for an article) and when mentioning Aer Arann as a likely candidate, they simply used an EI opb RE picture. I guess that is where ch-aviaiton got its information from. Sometimes they have insider info, but often they simply collect info from the www.