The lessons I take from this are:
- There are a number of routes and airports in the British Isles that could be served by a respectable operator of small planes
- Such an operator cannot exist on the back of one base; not an isolated island with a population of 100k; and not Gloucester, Blackpool, Anglesey, Oxford, Cambridge, Shoreham, Waterford, or any of the other places from which this operator could operate alone
- Such an operator probably cannot competitively exist on the basis of purely operating small planes as the administrative requirements of operating a respectable airline of any size, and as the missing economies of scale are too great
- The operator would have to be a national operator that already had bases in a number of airports around the UK, that operated a mixed fleet of various sizes, and that could offer connections and being a part of a greater marketing presence.
- The only operator that could do it would be something suspiciously similar to an old British Airways
- It will never happen, and therefore this chapter of aviation (and the airports it would otherwise have supported) will close.