The sun routes never really paid, the lease costs are too high. Flybe cannot charge more for the tickets otherwise customers will run off to the competition (SOU to LGW, EXT to BRS). Who said they are going up against the big boys? Where exactly is this stated? If and only if they lease an airbus it'll be to operate an already proven sun route network (in terms of pax numbers before you jump on the bandwagon) but at a cheaper cost to what they can currently be operated. I really don't know why you have to use rhetoric to over complicate it, and I really don't know what is so hard to understand. Did you read the report posted by Bean yesterday? If not I suggest you read it, and all 87 pages of it.