It was obvious the Dublin service wasn't going to be sustainable with the frequency it ran to. Take a look at Liverpool, to which EI also returned last year. The airport is in a similar position to EMA - fairly close to a larger airport with well established links. However, the EI service from LPL to DUB is now four a day, with connections to ten or more north American destinations. EMA was (is) one a day with no worthwhile connections. To have any chance of making any headway it needed to have been at least twice, ideally three times a day, to provide convenient one-stop service to long haul destinations.
Very disappointing; what is it that prevents the East Midlands being able to hold on to services other than those offered by leisure and low cost carriers?
The root of the problem goes back to when EMA welcomed Go and Ryanair with open arms and more or less let them run amok. That put the wind up Sir MDB and forced a reaction - the change from BMI to Baby - which immediately robbed EMA of its global connectivity. Long term, that sort of traffic is the life blood of airports that want to serve sustainable markets. But EMA totally embraced the low-cost carriers (which I acknowledge helped the numbers to an extent, but only in a certain way) while eschewing full-service that would have been a steady performer in the long term. Short-termism versus long term vision on the part of the airport management of the time.
There was nothing wrong with letting FR or Go/U2 in to fly to places in the back end of Poland or similar, but the low-costs should never have been allowed onto the CDGs, AMSs, DUBs, GLAs, EDIs. But they were, and leisure traffic at EMA was largely sucked up by the cheapies, while at the same time BHX more or less ignored to the low cost sector and put its energy into developing a sustainable full-service network. The business passengers went down the road to BHX and that's where they'll continue to travel from on a regular basis unless there is reliable, alliance led (e.g. Star, OneWorld, Skyteam), connectivity from EMA. That won't happen while the low-costs continue to run interference in those markets.
The immediate opportunities for sustainable twice-a-day or better business-led flights should be DUB, AMS and (to an extent) CDG. If you can establish those, with connectivity, then there's a chance the network will grow. But they won't work for the full-service airlines (which tend to be in it more long term than the fickle low-cost carriers) while they have to compete with a low-cost carrier - these airlines still need to sell some cheap tickets to fill up the back of the bus.
Sadly FR, LS etc are too entrenched now, and for the most part they call the shots in where and when. EMA can't even compete particularly well for new low-cost carriers now, for doing so risks upsetting the incumbents on which the airport is extremely [almost totally?] reliant (consider what is happening near Oslo right now, with one airport on the verge of shutting down because Ryanair are leaving - EMA can't let that happen).