The reason that FR is not expanding at the rate they pledged previously is because of the greedy people at MAG who started to demand FR pay a matter of 'pounds' instead of 'pence' on the airport deal. FR will make a significant go of BOH if MAG can revert to 'pence' and be creative enough in generating income from other streams based upon FR's potential volumes. The beauty of BOH is that the operation is pretty much subsidised by the other businesses on the airport. So pax operations are pure cream - hence why the airport doesn't disappear even when airlines come and go. However this is also BOH's downfall as MAG will want more 'cream' and they think this is from aviation income and not volume based income. I agree with others - the only airlines that can make BOH work (high outbound pax demand, little inbound) would be brands like FR or U2 or limited holiday flights.
Agree also with Rivet Joint that yield to the airline is critical. This is why domestic or European business routes will never work. FR used to operate double daily services to EDI and double daily services to GLA but quickly dropped them when they realised people were only willing to pay 10 quid.
The choice of routes then become the determining factor in making BOH a '1 million' passenger airport. In my opinion those routes are the likes of Barcelona, Bergerac, Funchal, Tel Aviv, Athens, Rome, Venice, Jerez, Seville, Gibralter, Lisbon, Oporto, Bilbao, Nice, Toulon, Biarritz and ski flights. These are still yet to be exploited and FR and U2 i'm sure will only do it when the deal is presented to them. But my fear is that as long as MAG are in control, this won't be allowed. Idiots.