My opinion is that in reality the only people that want the morning schedule are the spotters.
Hmmm ... let's just think about that for a moment. 06:05 scheduled long-haul arrival. Deduct the time spent taxying from runway to stand. Allow for the customary arrival upto one hour earlier because such flights rarely use up their generous contingency to protect their on-time record. That puts this flight arriving at MAN in the hours of darkness for most of the year. So the spotters can observe a red flashing light flying down the approach if they can be bothered to interrupt their sleep. Photographers can just slumber on. The departure time falls during the single runway ops period at MAN which complicates matters for photographers. I think we can safely rule out the notion that spotters were angling for these particular timings, though most will enthusiastically welcome news of this new service as one would expect.
quite how keen people will be to connect with flybe on a second hand Dash 8 is something I am going to have to be persuaded on however.
I think it is fair to say that many contributors to PPRuNe are self-confessed 'Avgeeks' including the two of us, Skipness. But 99% of passengers are not. I'd be amazed if 1 in 1000 FlyBe pax could tell whether their purple DH8D is ex-Republic or a FlyBe original. And even if they could, why would they care? FlyBe offers practical connecting opportunities to/from destinations such as EXT / BHD / IOM / ABZ etc at times and prices which work well for most customers. And the DH8D is a type well-suited to the role it fulfils ... nothing wrong with it. Though of course most punters couldn't tell us what type they were booked on either at the booking stage or just after they've disembarked. It is of absolutely no consequence to most travellers.