Originally Posted by
caaardiff
I'm not convinced by the propensity to fly argument for the reason CWL is failing. Pre-covid in 2019 CWL had 1.63 million passengers which was continually creeping up from the 1m passengers in 2014. 2019 was up 4.3 percent than 2018.
This is quite an interesting document created in 2020 by the Welsh Government, covering pre-covid numbers.
https://www.gov.wales/sites/default/...t-2019-397.pdf
According to BRS masterplan created in 2017 20% of BRS passengers travel from South Wales of it's then 8m yearly passengers. That's around 1.6m passengers.
Currently BRS is nearing 10m passengers and if the 20% still stands that 2m Welsh people using BRS, if not more since Covid and CWL's decline.
The key for CWL is to win back those passengers from BRS, firstly starting with routes currently served from both Airports, then target new routes once momentum builds. And that is just when looking at BRS. There's still plenty of people from South Wales flying from Birmingham, Manchester and London that can be won back.
What CWL needs to the core scheduled routes to be at decent prices and good times to create that initial attraction to look at CWL when booking flights.
This was what I was trying to get at in my last post, there might be 2mppa from South Wales using BRS, but there are 8mppa using BRS from other areas. So if you were an airline (and let’s face it, there aren’t many to choose from these days) where would you put your expensive assets and invest in a base?
CWL has its place, but why does that place
have to be an airport flying millions of passengers to Tenerife and the Costas? Can it not build on what it’s already successful at and actually pay its own way without the public having to invest large amounts in facilities and subsidies that come to nothing?