I've read all the posts & information as regards the Loganair venture & it seems to me to verge on insanity when looked upon as a stand up commercial operation in it's own right. There is nothing that I can see that makes this operation sustainable when working alongside Eastern, and I could see it struggling even if Eastern were to be forced out.
Back to basic's & you a have a small struggling airport with two routes the "thick" KLM AMS c.85% of traffic & "thin" Eastern ABZ c.11%.
The trend on the ABZ route has been downwards 53% drop in 2016 & clearly still struggling, given the plan (now redundant) to replace J41's with lower capacity J31's !
So along comes another operator prepared to give DTV a go ! & you say to yourself well done to them
until you read the detail of their proposal
& the real & quite pathetic reason becomes apparent
ie to undermine Eastern’s operation.
Back to the proposal itself & the only positive, which provides any merit for this operation at all is that from Friday through to Sunday, Loganair are to fly one daily return ABZ – NWI via DTV , Dep ABZ 13.00 Arr NWI 15.20, Dep NWI 16.00 arr. ABZ 18.50. The relevance to DTV is that conveniently it is to call in en-route at DTV allowing pick up & drop off of pax both ways. This may in itself increase the DTV stats, dependent on through traffic, though I suspect little else.
Other than the above Eastern currently operate up to 3 daily returns ABZ – NWI direct, so what is going on ? has Eastern missed a trick, or possibly more likely, given their knowledge of the route and that of DTV where they have considerable presence, concluded it was not feasible for commercial or other reasons ?
Finally it would not be Pprune if the majority of posters to this thread had not gone off at a tangent & discussed alternates other than DTV – NWI , however as can be seen further destinations / expanding the network of operations from DTV are not necessarily on Loganair’s agenda at all, & if route growth was a consideration, then perhaps as mooted DTV would be well down the pecking order & indeed perhaps irrational when there are larger hubs less than 40 miles away pushing for similar growth.