I think we can safely say Hainan will not be launching MAN in 2015.
Given MAN were just '3 months away' from announcing flight, to the point MAN even went as far to say flights would be '5 weekly' (quite unusual for an airport to say things like that before an announcement), Hainan stating that MAN would be launched in 2015 back when they launched Paris, Hainan signing up handling/transport/hotels etc, I would be keen to know what went so badly wrong, as, the bulk of the hard work was evidently done, it should have been pretty much a done deal.
I suppose you win some and loose some, but, its not often you get so close to a service, then for it not to happen is a bit of a wierd one (I know rumours happen all the time, but, this time, the parties involved were giving out the bulk of the info).
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In terms of the quote from O'Toole 'most of europe is covered', I kind of see where he is coming from.
In terms of large gaps, only Bucharest, a mid-German airport and Bordeaux stand out as 'largish' unserved gaps, and focus should now be on building up flights.
Ideally, Madrid, Vienna, Oslo and Athens need to be at least daily (Ryanair look to be making MAD daily this winter and Austrian hotly tipped to be aiming for a daily MAN-VIE in September).
Lyon needs to be more than 1 weekly, and year round. Scope for Palma to be better served in winter, Barcelona is one that could do with a better winter offering too. To think that on the germanwings aircraft that crashed there were 7 passengers heading to MAN, as well as countless other BCN-XXX-MAN vv routings due to no direct flights that day, indicates a market is possibly there for daily winter flights.
Just my 2 cents.