Unfortunately I also have to side with the naysayers. SOU is still completely at the mercy of flymaybe and they have recently handed back 6 Q400s with more to follow. Also no new frames due next year. Eastern make most their money from the oil contracts and these are starting to become marginal so their position is precarious. There are strong rumours Aurigny are about to abandon the Alderney route with a few start ups giving them an excuse to shirk their responsibilities. Low cost carriers in Air Berlin, Vueling, Volotea have been and gone after only 1 year of service and I fully expect Easy will follow. SOU seems to be one of the few routes the usually reliable KLM frequently cancel (cancelled in advance tomorrow morning for seemingly no reason?). Blue islands haven't pulled up any trees on the Channel Islands routes (I think there might be less frequency?). More business jets seem to utilise BOH than SOU which is just bizarre to me (turned away by SOU because of space or cost?) the only silver lining is BMI who amazingly are still maintaining a 2 rotation day and not giving up after 1 year like the others.
As discussed over and over the only golden ticket for SOU is Easy who would almost certainly be able to justify a base twice the size of Southend? The problem is that the airport needs to provide the infrastructure as we all have discussed. The fact that their visibility judgement was made by a man standing on a ladder until recently speaks volumes. This utter negligence must fall squarely at the abject management surely? Red funnel who are another local business that are owned by overseas pensions have just invested 10m within a few months of being bought. BOH invested 50m completely on a speculative basis. How is SOU different? Arguably they have more cause for investment than those two examples.