Cuthere,
Why are you surprised? I am guessing that United are doing ok on the BFS EWR (obviously without specific inside knowledge), but potentially see Dublin as way more profitable/ attractive for deployment of the daily rotation, while still possibly gaining most of the NI originating passengers. Dublin offers the potential to feed to Star partner airlines like SAS, Lufthansa, Turkish, Swiss, Ethopian, not to mention the great level of business traffic that the Dublin area brings.
Dublin has seen as we all know an amazing growth and sparkling performance in terms of Transatlantic expansion and growth, nonetheless, I hope NI can sustain its link to the US. I could see Norwegian being a good match for the market.
The downside of this subvention is that it could prohibit other airlines from join the market, as they would be expecting similar treatment....