Late to this probable troll thread but here's my opinion since everyone seems to have one these days
I bought the LEP at the height of it's price for £180 or whatever it was as well as the base game as well as a bunch of skins and as well as a 2nd acc with Horizons. My expenditure on Elite tops £250 before you include Lavecon, FX2018 and my joystick + GPU.
However, unlike a small number of vocal people I seem to have read and understood all 3 letters of LEP. It's
lifetime, I bought it knowing I'd have to be patient, I bought it knowing that my interest in the game may have gone by the time I got my values worth, I bought it assuming that things could go terribly wrong and development could stop within 2 years of purchase leaving me with nothing.
Horizons I got for free which was nice. Beyond was free for everyone with Horizons which was unexpected and lowered the LEP value by proxy but what I read from that is that FDev are stable enough financially to do so which means development is unlikely to cease anytime soon. Great news for us LEP owners.
Lets address specificially this situation of getting no premium content this year. Yes, it isn't ideal for LEP owners, I'm a bit disappointed and I'm sure FDev are too as they planned to deliver some. However, i'm happy enough as I know premium content will come next year and probably the year after and the year after that which LEP will get for free.
FDev have offered a "sorry" because they wanted to do a few bits Q4 2018 but plans got changed, they announced this a few months ago.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/444800-Important-Community-Update?highlight=premium
In short they had plans, things got delayed, they announced it when they knew it'd not happen and also offered a "sorry" for 2018. Stuff hasn't "gone" or been removed, it's delayed and we got free stuff as an apology. Given the current activity of almost all other game developers at the moment this is a pretty classy move, as is doing a free year of updates for a game without non-cosmetic micro-transactions. Look at Fallout 4 collectors edition they actually physically did not get what was advertised and got a cheap knock-off product instead, Bethesda offered £5 worth of micro-transaction points before lawsuit threats got them to actually produce and supply what the players paid for.. Here we have simply a delay in development and FDev are offering 6 skins and 2 bobbleheads, the equivalent of about £20!
All in all i'm in it for a lifetime, I didn't expect everything in 3 years because frankly I want to live a bit longer! When taking everything as a whole I'm happy enough. Could be better sure but development isn't guaranteed and the way it's turned out is by no means bad.
So here's my round-off question: What more could/should they have done in terms of communication, apology etc?