Another airline pulls out of Cardiff Airport

[goats]

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.

[llan bluebird]

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

[Sky High Bluebird]

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.

[A Quiet Monkfish]

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.

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..

[goats]

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

[Rjk]

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

[TWGL1]

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

Do you work for the government bro
You don’t think clearly

[Rjk]

Do you work for the government bro
You don’t think clearly

I do not work for the government.
do you disagree with something I've said above?

[life on mars]

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

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

[North Cardiff Blue]

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

In the 80's BMI Baby were there, it seemed quite busy for a bit.

[2b2bdoo]

In the 80's BMI Baby were there, it seemed quite busy for a bit.

I used to love checking in BMI baby although it was much later than that I worked there. Flights were always busy, they used to make a fortune on additional costs at the airport.

[splott parker]

Bristol is ok pre flight, plenty of eating and drinking places, the lounges are pretty good value too. It’s the actual route march to get to the plane that’s not good, no travelators for those who have trouble walking, every flight I’ve got from there always seems to involve a sponsored walk. If a few flights arrive home at the same time, passport control is chaotic. The unmanned ones work when they want to when you eventually get to them.
It’d be Cardiff every time for me if possible.

[2b2bdoo]

Bristol is ok pre flight, plenty of eating and drinking places, the lounges are pretty good value too. It’s the actual route march to get to the plane that’s not good, no travelators for those who have trouble walking, every flight I’ve got from there always seems to involve a sponsored walk. If a few flights arrive home at the same time, passport control is chaotic. The unmanned ones work when they want to when you eventually get to them.
It’d be Cardiff every time for me if possible.

The unmanned passport check machines not working are usually down to human error.