I would be unsurprised to find that almost all of those job losses will be linked to the closure of the Gatwick base with no real expansion planned at other bases, ergo, no opportunity for relocation. If the route to Southampton was under threat, why on earth would they release next year's schedule which continues with three return trips a day? Doesn't make sense. Whichever way one looks at it, the company is a real mess at the moment and simply lacked good leadership when it was required.
The "collapse" in domestic air travel is in no small part due to the poor product offering from the likes of Flybe. Over central portions of the country, where train travel is fast and frequent, it is hard for them to compete. However, as has been said numerous times, flying is still often the best way to get from A to B over the longer domestic routes and the cost is often competitive. Easyjet have proven this to be the case and, indeed, are opening 2 routes from Gatwick the day after FlyBe closes them. On top of this, Easyjet already operate in direct competition to FlyBe on 3 of their other routes from the same airport. Furthermore, Eastern have shown that a flight can sit alongside a half hourly train journey that takes 3.5 to 4 hours on the Newcastle - Birmingham sector.
Flybe have simply been caught with their trousers down on the wrong routes with the wrong aircraft. Now they are focussing properly on their core routes where they control the market and are removing the loss makers that have been around far too long. I am still concerned that their aircraft fleet is wrong (outside the Q400 core). Less than 100 seat jets do not work very well on point to point operations. In their restructuring plan (which is available for all to read online) even FlyBe nod massively toward this reality by stating that they need to get as much from the E-195 as possible. In other words, they need to fill these aircraft to the rafters and squeeze every last flying hour from them.
FlyBe have shown themselves to be totally ruthless with LBA having previously cut London City, Gatwick, Aberdeen, Exeter, Knock etc which leads me to believe that the current routes are safe. There is no doubt in my mind that if they did not work they would have gone already. Having said that, in the case of Aberdeen and Exeter, at least, they were around much longer than they should have been, considering their performance. Flybe's problems are far wider and more deep rooted than the couple of routes they now operate from LBA.