Why would an airline establish a route only to see someone else take the profit? The route support scheme may need some kind of alteration to shield airlines opening up a route from that kind of behaviour.
Fair enough, but it's hard to see what that alteration could be.
Say Airline A launches a hitherto unserved route and gets the benefit of the new-route discount scheme. Then Airline B (or Airline R if you like
) decides they want the interloper gone, so they come onto the route. They won't normally get a discount on landing fees (as it's not an unserved route) so they'll likely have to pay published tariffs, but there is nothing the airport can do to stop them, and Airline R may just feel that it's worth taking the loss for a few months to teach the upstart a lesson and get rid of them. Unless the airport wants to cover all of Airline A's losses (not going to happen!), there's nothing that airport management can really do to stop this. Going to Airline R and saying "please play nicely with others" isn't going to achieve anything either. Sad but true. An airport's management doesn't have anything like the power that some excitable posters on here (not you, 840!) seem to think they have - "Why doesn't management get Airline X to start a service?" "Why doesn't management refuse to let Airline Y in to compete like this?"