https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/w...rdiff-28889840
Eastern Airport for the Paris route.
Not a major carrier but how many more nails in the coffin
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https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/w...rdiff-28889840
Eastern Airport for the Paris route.
Not a major carrier but how many more nails in the coffin
Absolute embarrassment of an airport….newquay airport has more flights I think….jeez. Another WAG legacy on ruining Wales at 20 mph or very slowly……
If it wasn't for the Welsh government the airport would have closed down years ago.Originally Posted by goats
They had actually turned it around but then Covid hit at the worst possible time and had a huge impact on the market.
there's a big chicken and egg effect in that you need passenger numbers to bring costs down attract airlines and you need flights to raise passenger numbers. Better carriers and more significant infrastructure spending will only be viable once passenger numbers are significantly raised, so its basically back to square one to try to gradually get them back up again.
All very unfortunate but it doesn't make sense to lay the blame at the welsh government's door.
[QUOTE=Rjk;5499663]If it wasn't for the Welsh government the airport would have closed down years ago.
They had actually turned it around but then Covid hit at the worst possible time and had a huge impact on the market.
there's a big chicken and egg effect in that you need passenger numbers to bring costs down attract airlines and you need flights to raise passenger numbers. Better carriers and more significant infrastructure spending will only be viable once passenger numbers are significantly raised, so its basically back to square one to try to gradually get them back up again.
If Ryan Air and EasyJet had the same flight destinations going from Cardiff as they do Bristol, they would have literally millions more passengers using Cardiff Airport per year. Something has to be done about encouraging the budget airlines to fly to more destinations in Europe from our airport. I go to Lanzarote three times a year and occasionally Beziers. Every time I fly it means he hassle of flying from Bristol. It really grips my p*ss that I have to do that.
[QUOTE=Mr Soul '68;5499783]I don’t what the figures involved are but Bristol airport owners pay out large sums of money to these carriers in order to ensure they are the preferred regional airport
I doubt WAG have the nous or the balls to go head to head over this.
Anyway I don’t know any aircraft that can take off at 20 mph
[QUOTE=Mr Soul '68;5499783]Agree, i love flying from Cardiff, hate Bristol, it's horrible to get there. I have no idea what incentives could be offered by the Welsh Goverment in order to bring low cot airlines to Cardiff. We had Wizz pull out a couple of years back and apparently (Completely anecdotal on my part) the numbers were good. I think that ryanair do a winter route to the canaries from Cardiff, or did until recently.
[QUOTE=Tuerto;5499787]It's easy to get to Bristol Airport from Cardiff. In fact it's not much longer than getting to Cardiif airport anyway, and always much cheaper flights
[QUOTE=Mr Soul '68;5499783]Ryanair and easyJet only operate out of Bristol not Cardiff because Bristol has so many more passengers, so costs are spread over a larger number of flights and they can offer cheaper flights.
if Cardiff became more cost effective than Bristol then they'd move at the drop of a hat, however I don't think that can just be achieved by lowering fees.
they need to grow the airport first to get a critical mass of passengers, then they will be able to entice these airlines back.
this is what they were doing before COVID struck.
[QUOTE=Rjk;5499901]You seem to know your stuff on this, I'll use it every time as long as it's not more than £120 more for two flights/holidays, it is a chicken and an egg, I think they need to discount charges for one airline and one-holiday firm like tui to get things moving.
Of course it does. Everything that ever goes wrong is the fault of the Welsh Government to some people.
They either govern Wales or the don't in the immortal words of Sir Kier the buck stops at the top, well in this case that's the WAG, and their woeful lack of aspiration
I'll bear that in mind whenever something goes wrong in England that it must be the Westminster government's fault. After all, they either govern, or they don't.
Ignore. Post repeated...
What's the parking like there these days?
I picked my daughter up from Bristol airport the other day - £6 for 10 minutes in their "Drop & Go" carpark. Bloody extortionate. They're not shy of fining people who accidentally end up in the wrong place either.
Lots of flights from there, but I can't stand the place.
And the £9 each way clean air zone charge if your vehicle doesn’t comply. Bet Bristol Airport we’re ecstatic about that.
Ah remember the small eastern airways plane that they used to use for Cardiff to Newport (and onwards to Aberdeen at one point). Not as bad as the Anglesey plane but you wouldn’t have got me on either. When a planes so small you can’t take your hand luggage in the cabin with you it’s a no for me lol
They are a small airline, but it's another example of how badly run that place is.
No new M4, 20mph roads, trains half empty and delayed, Cardiff airport on its arse, far less cruise ships than other parts of the UK etc etc.
Cardiff Bus is alright in fairness, but transport infrastructure in Wales is an absolute joke.
Why would any international business that relies on infrastructure come here?!
Bristol Airport cannot expand any further apparently
Cardiff has one of the biggest runways in the UK and has plenty of room for expansion
So you’d think it might sort itself out one day under decent mgt? It’s not like Bristol airport is in a decent location either, no fast road to it, just a coach from Bristol city centre. It just needs a couple of decent cheap airlines like easy jet but I guess with their links to Bristol it’s not going to happen. A transatlantic route would be ideal save going east to fly west again, shorter flight, big runway. Just needs to right fare to negate going to Heathrow or Gatwick.
This is where any linked-up thinking crumbles.
Scale baby, Scale. The fixed costs are amortised over fewer routes so the landing fee has to rise to cover the fixed costs. To reduce the landing fee's you need more flights, to get more flight you need to offer discounted rates to the airlines, at a loss to start. If you did decide to do that the airlines need to fill their planes. Geographically it knackered. Nothing south, few people live to the east of you, so its 20 miles north and west. West you have to travel through a bottleneck of biblical proportions and the alternative is non-existent public transport, which is an expensive train to Cardiff and a bus to the airport (same as most UK airports)
I remember Micheal O'Leary of Ryanair saying that CWL relied on the UK subsidy for keeping that very long runway in good condition as its the first transatlantic emergency landing strip
Its artificially been kept alive, it needed to move to severn junction region 20 years ago when that was first mooted
The runway at 2392 metres is relatively short albeit still longer than Bristol’s.
I’d take anything O’Leary says with a pinch of salt , there is no subsidy to maintain the runway.
Agree with what you say about location which is Cardiff’s biggest weakness together with a catchment area which is economically in decline resulting in a local population having less propensity to fly.
Until that changes it will struggle to match the halcyon days of 2002-2004 where pax numbers were over 2m.
Bristol suffers the same poor infrastructure problems as Cardiff , but its well placed to serve a larger and wealthier catchment area , including annoyingly large parts of SE Wales.
The one possible bright spot for Cardiff is that Bristol is now pretty much full , this summer there will be 36 based aircraft between the based airlines there and they simply do not have the stand capacity for any further expansion.
If air travel continues to bounce back strongly as it has since the pandemic then airlines may start to look at Cardiff for potential overspill traffic.
Ryanair approach CWA before Bristol, but CWA were asking for their standard landing fees even though Ryanair said they would be dwarfed by what the airport would make over the years on concessions etc. Bristol saw this and gave them a very decent deal - the rest is history.
In terms of runway facilities, access, weather, Cardiff is far better placed than Bristol - which was used in WW2 to train pilots in foggy conditions, because it gets so much fog/mist.
And numbers ? Bristol just had OK to up to 12m from 10m, and yes, more than 50% of those will travel from this side of the bridge..
Yep that sounds about right, they get 10 million already? Jeez I think we were close pre covid too, maybe half, now it’s not even comparable. So short sighted of whoever was in charge not to give Ryan air or easy jet good terms….whats that old saying about speculate to accumulate? No the gulf is so huge nothing will work here. They won’t switch here as they are happy there.
Might aswell just shut it down and write off another few 100 million
Cardiff have never had that many, they had around 2 million in 2007, which dropped to half that before the Welsh government took over, they were on track to be more than 2 million by now if it hasn't been for COVID, but that dropped it to about 200k , last I heard it was up to around 800k
Totally agree perhaps , I only use BS excellent facility. not that far away now with new bridge more than one way in and we will never compete due to its geographical edge and access via two motorways trunks going north , south ,west and east.
Perhaps invest the millions into something like health , policing , social care , relief m4 ,policing ,education, all well meaning needed socialist causes
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