It just needs to be stripped back to the basics to get people to think to check Cardiff first over Bristol. It's not secret that sun routes work best from CWL and that has always been the case.
EZY (mainly), FR and Jet2 are the power houses at BRS that attract people over the bridge. They are the main players of Airlines that will generally offer the lowest prices. CWL will never get Easyjet, who are probably the more trusted brand out of the low cost Airlines vs Ryanair and Wizz. Things might've been very different if Wizz produced a stable and reliable program. There was a hell of a lot of fanfare from people about the potential from Wizz from the general public. But Covid hit, then further base delays and changes hit and their performance in disruption handling was abysmal. But I don't think we've seen the last from FR now that they have returned with some offerings.
When you look at what CWL offers:
3x TUI (summer) based aircraft - x1 in Winter
Daily EI to BHD, 2x weekly FR to BFS (New for summer)
Daily FR to DUB for coming summer
2x weekly FAO (year round) and 2x weekly AGP (now full Summer) with FR,
5 flights in total a week from VY to ALC (x3) and AGP (x2) - A huge reduction from previous offerings - possibly down to an end to a 10 year deal and the effect of Wizz - Could a new deal be done?
x6 weekly Loganair to EDI and a varying schedule (currently 2x daily) from KL to AMS.
Although not a huge offering, it's better than some years have been over the past decade.
CWL needs to concentrate on what it knows works.
- A reliable and consistent domestic/Ireland schedule - which seems to be in place for summer.
- Decent frequencies and competitive fares to the main keys routes - ALC, AGP, PMI and FAO - Hopefully FR will pick up some slack from away bases and VY will come back to previous frequencies.
- Building KL/AMS back up to 3x daily flights
- Maybe some away base routes from FR such as Canaries/Cyprus
Once that gets people talking about CWL again, then push for bigger things and new routes.
Over recent years there's been too ambitious offerings that have suffered at the hands of covid and cost of living issues, and every time CWL ends up looking like it's not a viable option.