Prove the route before you commit an owned aircraft.
Fly the route on leased capacity and find out whether the demand is real before an owned aircraft is tied to it. If it works you keep flying it. If it does not, the lease ends and nothing is left stranded on your balance sheet.
One thing to build into the contract. The Court of Justice held in 2018 that a wet lease provider is not the operating carrier for passenger rights purposes, so compensation claims land on you rather than on the operator flying the aircraft.
