Originally Posted by
macdo
Lets not let the facts get in the way of a bit of good old fashioned nationalism!
The reason holidays from CWL were more expensive than elsewhere was the fact that the charges made by CWL were higher and the CWL management were unwilling to reduce them.
Due to this added burden, the Welsh public voted with their wallets and flew out of BRS.
Result can be observed in the pax figures for BRS and CWL respectively for at least the last 20 years.
Did I really see a reference to FlyForBeanz up there? Lord above!!
Facts?
OK, for any punters some mid-point between BRS & CWL it is six of one and a half dozen of the other which airport they choose but for punters west of Newport and up the valleys travelling to BRS is not going to be cheap, around 100 miles round trip from/to central Cardiff or what price public transport for one, two, three or four persons?
On the overall cost of a holiday CWL, the airport, can have very little impact, contributing to the cost of that holiday are the hotel and transfer costs, overheads of both tour operator and airline, aircraft hull costs, fuel, overflight charges, destination airport charges, I mean that there are so many individual costs incorporated in to the cost of a holiday CWL cannot possibly have more than a negligible impact upon that cost by their prices of landing, navigation, any aircraft parking and what it costs per passenger to check-in thru until boarding the aircraft, I cannot imagine would get even close to financing the costs of travelling to/from BRS.
When these airlines, loco's in particular, squeeze the airport for reduced charges do you think that they are passing those reduced charges on to the passenger, of course a loco business model is 'cheap', I operate such a low cost business model myself, I search around for the best prices on supplies to calculate what I need to charge the customer but generally supplier cost savings serve to increase operator profits rather than customer savings, an example of this is in the past couple of years I changed to LED light bulbs to achieve a 22% reduction in the wattage of my business's lighting, do you think that saving has been passed on to the customer, no it hasn't, that has served to only reduce overheads increasing profits.
So if the costs of holidays are significantly higher from CWL then that is the tour operator charging the premium and cannot be blamed upon the airport, I've just checked KLM's fares from both BRS & CWL and they are charging the same base fare for both.
Comparing BRS & CWL's passenger figures serves no constructive purpose, rule no.2 of business is to concentrate on your own business and not what others are doing, so long as BRS have the clientele airlines then they shall always have the more passengers and that has nothing to do with CWL's charges, it is plain and simple geographic location.
Just look at BRS's catchment area, they've got Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Avon, Gloucestershire, Wilshire and much of Dorset, I have friends who live in Swindon, whilst they consider BRS to be their local airport if BRS wasn't there then they'd head off the other way along the M4 to LHR, little if any chance that they would ever contemplate utilising CWL and similarly for the people of the south and west of England, little if any chance that they would ever drive north past BRS to cross the Severn before travelling back south again to CWL, BRS shall always win simply because of geographic location and that is something that CWL cannot compete with.
I'm sure that CWL management are focusing upon their business, kind of a shame that others continue to focus upon what's happening across the other side of the Severn!