I assume that all these tantalising hints about additional S18 traffic come as a result of the Slot Conference which was held about 2 weeks ago.
It is a well known fact that what comes out of the slot conference, when all the airlines finally get to find out what the competition is actually planning, is often a very different animal to what actually happens at the actual start of S18 with the clock change. In practice,operations are usually some percentage points down on what comes out of the slot conference.
We will have to wait and see what happens.
But the scale of bids does show how astute MA were in challenging the Monarch slot business to ensure that potential new operations were not stymied by not being able to access slots that were never going to be used.