Cardiff airport has never been a user-friendly place since it moved across the runway in to the bunker of a terminal, which it now occupies. I have been in better-designed terminal in the middle of Africa than Cardiff. It needs to be pulled down and rebuilt having been designed by some one with an ounce of common sense.
The departures area once you leave the public area is dismal, almost totally devoid of natural daylight, poor access to toilets, which the last time I was there was along corridors and through numerous doors which are more like an dismal office block than an airport. Compared to Bristol’s light, open area, which the traveller can see outside, it is like being in a bunker.
As for arrivals, only the most ably bodied person can survive the tortuous trip from the apron to the baggage area, up and down countless number of steps and along passageways only just wide enough for one person. If you are unfortunate to get caught behind some older person who is struggling with all the steps, then you stand little chance of getting through quickly.
As for the car parks, it is only a few years ago some one put a ramp into the sunken area, which are the car parks to allow baggage trolleys down to peoples cars.
It is not only low fares, which attract passengers to an airport; it is also the image and user friendliness of the place, which means a lot. Look on the web and see passenger reviews about airports and terminal. They rate them and exchanges views on them and the bad ones are avoided by the masses.
Bristol is far more users friendly but it does have its faults as well. Long security queues at times are one of them, but generally it is better and will I think with the development be a much better place.
As for the Welsh choosing Bristol over Cardiff, look at the distance between them, just over sixty miles, but from the higher population areas, the Valley’s for instance the distance to Bristol airport compares well to that of Cardiff airport. From Swansea and West Wales, the extra thirty miles is nothing when most of it is on motorway and knowing you will get a better airport and cheaper flights.
The rail link is a good idea, but have you seen the station, nothing more than a bus stop. Rhoose is a wild and wet area with weather coming off the Bristol Channel during the winter months, in fact the summer months can be the same, so people using the station are in for a bit of a rough time waiting for their train to Cardiff or Bridgend to change trains and go onto their final destination. Again image and friendliness will go towards attracting people, or not as the case may be. How many trains in a day will use the new station and will they be timed to meet with aircraft arrivals and departures, I don’t think so. The Vale of Glamorgan line was reopened to feed Cardiff from the likes of Llantwit Major, St. Athens and Rhoose villages, not the airport. The airport just happens to be at Rhoose, which is now a sizable village along with Llantwit.
It is a shame that a new combined airport at Margam on the old steel works site could not have been developed and Cardiff and Bristol transferred there. A good high-speed rail link to all parts of the country is already in place along with the M4 and M5 only being a stone through away.
Cardiff needs a major rework along with low cost carriers before it will become the airport the Welsh Assembly thinks it should be. All us who exist in the real work know that MP’s and Assembly members don’t, this is the problem.
Taffman