Leaving aside the football supporter-type adulation that some aviation followers seem to pursue when it comes to nearby airports, there is no doubt that the fortunes of CWL and its neighbour at BRS are inextricably linked and have been for many, many years.
Looking back at CAA statistics over the past 60 years CWL and BRS were much of a muchness when it came to passenger numbers until the mid 1980s, with CWL slightly ahead for most, though not all, of the intervening years. It was fairly small beer though because annual numbers did not reach 300,000 at either airport until 1982. The last time that CWL handled more passengers in a calendar year than its neighbour was in 1986: 487,000-469,000.
OC37 makes a valid point about Les Wilson. Until he was appointed as BRS MD in 1980 the then city council-owned airport had been a drain on the purses of city rate payers and there were calls to close it. Les (tragically killed in a motor accident in 1995) might even have been the last chance saloon. He recognised the potential as Barbara Cassani and her senior colleagues did 20 years later when BRS was selected as GoFly’s second base with the airline later bought by easyJet.
BRS has also been fortunate (or perhaps good judgement on the part of the company played a part) in the quality of its senior management since Les Wilson’s time, with the various overseas owners following full privatisation in 2001 investing hundreds of millions of pounds into infrastructure and other amelioration.
Since the mid 1980s BRS has moved steadily ahead of CWL with the pace growing markedly this century following the arrival of GoFly to the point where in 2019 CWL handled 1.655 million against 8.959 million at BRS.
Why is that relevant to CWL? Mainly because between 12% and 20% of BRS’s annual passenger numbers (surveys down the years vary) originate or terminate in Wales. 20% in 2019 would mean nearly 1.8 million ‘Welsh’ passengers, more than used CWL in total.
Taking into account the number of BRS passengers from/to Devon and Cornwall as well means that the Lulsgate airport sees around a third of its passenger numbers generated from outside its core catchment.
BRS sits approximately midway between CWL and EXT and has a larger and generally more affluent catchment than these airports. This means it begins with a local passenger pool advantage and, because of its central position, is able to draw in passengers from both the CWL and EXT catchments to support those thinner routes that would not be viable at the other airports because of their smaller catchments and inability to ‘top up’ from the other (because of distance).
BRS also has a number of physical and operational disadvantages such as being positioned within the Green Belt, a small site, short runway, often poor weather across its 600 feet-plus AMSL elevation and difficult surface connectivity, most which don’t apply at CWL yet the airport has not yet managed to use any of these factors to significantly benefit itself.
OC37 also makes a point about passenger volume and its relationship with airport charges. A look at BRS’s accounts for the year ending 31 December 2018 (the latest year I can find) shows that its £112 million turnover contained only £42 million from aeronautical revenue. The rest was mainly the result of car parking and concessions which shows how much an airport like Bristol is heavily dependent on passenger footfall to feed its non-aeronautical revenue streams. The airport generated a profit of just under £36 million after tax that year.
It might be that CWL’s best chance for substantial growth in the future would be for BRS to lose its appeal to the Planning Inspectorate over the local authority’s decision to reject the airport’s expansion planning application earlier this year, which would mean a permanent cap of 10 mppa. Pre-Covid the BRS management projected that the ten million limit would be reached by the end of next year. The pandemic effect suggests that the airport will now take considerably longer to reach 10 mppa which might not be helpful to CWL, at least in the short term.
Both the Welsh Government and its airport company formally objected to BRS's expansion plans, saying that CWL had excess capacity and could handle the extra flights that BRS was seeking through its planning application.
As to a major ‘low-cost’ airline presence at CWL, Ryanair gave evidence to the Westminster Welsh Affairs Committee last year when the committee was enquiring into APD devolution to Wales. The airline said that APD was holding it back at CWL and if it was reduced or abolished Ryanair would put in more services there. I don’t know if this was simply part of Ryanair’s rhetoric in its longstanding campaign to have aviation taxes reduced or abolished across its network or whether it really was CWL-specific.