Yeah, cheers HugMonster, I also appreciate the insight, and it seems we may agree on more than we think! There IS absolutely no excuse for anyone in the military to think that class G is exclusively for their use. I have yet to come across anybody on the ATC side who subscribes to this view, but as you say, some pilots may think differently. At the same time though, the ATCOs are probably starting to feel a little bit like undervalued civvies in that they handle a great deal of civilian traffic during the daytime when they should really be concentrating on looking after their own.
I also agree that there is no reason why routes to the regional airports should not be viable, whether it be NCL, HUY, NWI, MME or wherever. Eastern Airways seem to be doing quite well, and a great number of their operations need to fly outside CAS. The loss of smaller regional routes would be detrimental to us all. Pilots suffer from uncertainty over job security, passengers suffer the inconvenience of having to travel overland to get to their nearest major airport, and ATCOs suffer as more and more traffic wants to be going to the same place at the same time, making sectors more vulnerable to sudden overloads.
While you say this is not solely a NCL/MME problem, it is where most of the problems lay. Traffic into NWI and HUY tends to have fewer conflictions (military or otherwise), and as you say there is no choice other than to fly outside CAS.
An extra 33 track miles therefore puts £250 on the cost of a one-way trip. Di that eight times per day and you've lost a couple of thousand quid - or put it another way, your break-even load factor has just gone up by two pax per trip - not insignificant in a small aircraft.
As an alternative, could you not just charge (on an F50) each passenger £5 more for each sector? I know that fare pitching is a fine balancing act between having aircraft full, and operating with them half-full. I also know that ultimately the passengers will have to bear the cost of any increase in flight time. Would there be a massive loss of goodwill for £5? At the moment most of the AMS-NCL aircraft are F100's anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the potential "increased cost per passenger" would be reduced on a larger, faster aircraft? And you would only have to charge this fare when the direct routeing wasn't available.
I respect the view that the airspace should be available to all users at all times. It should. But sadly history has shown than this isn't always as safe as it should be.