Originally Posted by
davidjohnson6
CAA stats for December 2023 on the route to Paris Orly:
Cardiff - 1,115 pax
East Midlands - 1,808 pax
Southampton - 1,871 pax
CWL saw 29 round trips in Dec-2023, while EMA and SOU each saw 30 round trips. Thus average pax load per one way flight is
Cardiff - 19 pax
East Midlands - 30 pax
Southampton - 31 pax
Aircraft on all 3 routes was (generally) a 72 seat ATR
As a comparison:
Bristol - Orly saw 11,250 pax and Bristol - CDG saw 27,159 pax (both are flown solely by Easyjet)
Cardiff - Amsterdam saw 9,642 pax and Southampton - Amsterdam saw 6,502 pax
I know load factors without yields tell only part of the story... but I think this is enough of the story to draw basic conclusions
Something is seriously wrong when you look at those figures. CWL carrying just 10% of what EZY ORY carried, without even considering the CDG numbers. CWL just needed 800 more passengers to have carried more than SOU and EMA. I don't recall Easterns prices being too cheap either so the yield wouldn't have been part of the reason.
Go back to Dec 2019 and BE carried 4179 passengers, so the potential is there, just being lost to other Airports. In 2019 overall 71,000 people used CDG.
Eastern were never going to be the exact answer, but they could've performed better on the route. There was next to no advertising and Eastern aren't known for being cheap.
AMS is still a mystery when CWL carried more passengers than similar sized Airports that maintain their 3x daily departures.