Originally Posted by
GLOworm
Genuine question: why are the scales tipped in the larger airports' favour? You've mentioned this a few times. This implies there's some legal/regulatory/subsidy-drive action which is creating an uneven playing field and that Cardiff is somehow being treated unfairly. Aside from the choice of the market supported by circumstances such as population, economic activity or geographic location, I don't see that Cardiff is at a disadvantage ..... but maybe I've misunderstood your point.
I'm not against devolved powers btw, or indeed Wales setting its APD. But if this was the case, and given the WAG's taxpayer-funded subsidies, surely the scales are being tipped in Cardiff's favour?
The bigger airport has much lower costs, it has the economy of scale and if you look at Bristol in particular it sits in one of the wealthiest areas in the country and with the large Easyjet base is able to attract passengers from much more than it's local area which then drains passengers from other areas away from other airports and that is magnified with their monopoly on Easyjet for the area. An airport like Cardiff can't compete with that hence why the playing field in my opinion isn't level. It's tilted very much in the favour of the larger airport and always will be. Though up until the Flybe announcement i do think the airport has been doing a good job of recovering.
As for Welsh government ownership there isn't a large amount of subsidy from what i've been able to find out. Yes they struck a marketing deal with Qatar Airways but the West of England combined authority can do the same, obviously budgets are different but they can still do it and of course the UK government could've done it as well. The money for the e-gates was a grant because CWL was too small to get them free off UK border like bigger airports can. The other money comes in the form of a loan facility which is paid back at commercial rates and has to come from the WG as if they went to a bank the amount would be deducted from the block grant every year.
As for APD tipping the scales in CWLs favour it won't it'll just level things up a little bit but the scales will always be in the favour of larger airports like Bristol.
Just my opinion and i'm sure many on here will disagree.