Its far too early to judge new route sales or performance.
Remember that Flybe have many years of operating from SOU and EXT, they know who on the south coast buys the seats, where they go and where those passengers live. The airline has also at least ten years of empirical data to back up that travel trend information.
The SOU/BOH by Flybe move is a smart one, SOU apron is space limited and pretty much full overnight, the ten stands at BOH give Flybe the ability to schedule more early in the day departures and late in the day arrivals.
For business travellers, most bookings are made within 14 days of the departure date, many less than 7 days ahead. For leisure it is usually much further ahead.
Many of the Flybe routes from BOH are sensibly aimed at the business traveller too, MAN (and cnxns) , PAR, AMS, GLA. Aircraft need to be busy all year, not just in the summer.
Its no coincidence that it is the leisure destinations are filling up first.
The south coast is booming economically too, employment is way above national average, business is growing. For those interested check out this report :
http://www.centreforcities.org/wp-co...tlook_2015.pdf
Search for Bournemouth, Portsmouth or Southampton in the report and check out where these cities sit in UK economic terms. This is a high growth area by any measure.
FF