If I can digress a little bit into the NCL vs EDI question...
I was in Edinburgh yesterday. The city was chock a block with foreigners: both tourists and those working in the service industries. Over half of the punters in the airport itself seemed to be non-local. Compare this to the departure lounge at NCL where you barely hear an accent from outside a 60 mile radius of Woolsington. Despite what people in in organisations like the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative might tell you (I still insist on putting a gap between the words 'Newcastle' and 'Gateshead' - sorry for being a tad off-message), Tyneside and the wider North East is still a tiny player in the UK's business and tourism sectors. When comparing Newcastle to Edinburgh I think we just aren't comparing apples with apples. (Mind, this might not be a bad thing, do we really want Dunstanburgh castle to be awash with tourists?
)
LBA might be a better comparison. Or even to a certain extent MME and we are in a hell of a lot better situation than them.
A wider question could be as to why this is the case. I am old enough to remember when EDI (the airport, not the city) was only slightly busier than NCL. What happened?