eggs in one basket, Bristol is EasyJet and should anything happen to them Bristol could end up like the poor neighbour across the River
Agreed. This goes to the heart of my argument about the airport having to do what for them may be the wrong thing to get the right result.
It would be great if all the routes at Cardiff, or indeed any other airport, were duplicated between operators; it would provide a comfortable fall back in case one airline ceased the route,and the airport would love it. But what it also does, except on a relatively small number of routes that have stacks of demand (eg, LHR-JFK), is slash the yields. Which turns the option that the airport would like to have into the airline's worst nightmare - do you think baby would have gone to CWL, or Go to BRS (etc etc) if the respective airports had said to them "fine, we want you, but we will encourage someone to come in to compete against you on your routes"?
The airport should be:
(a) encouraging new entrants, but not helping them in so that they can compete against incumbents - except on routes that are proven to be under served (at CWL, that is basically the Spanish routes in the Summer). I would suggest that BHD is not in that camp somehow;
(b) having to swallow its pride and follow a strategy. This may involve saying no to people. Imagine if Air XYZ knocked on the airport's door and said that it wanted to operate out of CWL on all bmibaby's routes, but ten minutes before them. The airport
should listen politely and then say "no ta". What would CWL say?
Prediction time. Cheeky Visual is about right I reckon - flybe are dipping their toe in the CWL pool to find out what baby will do when faced with them, in preparation for the forthcoming punch-up at BHX - that one will make the Rumble in the Jungle look like the Teddy Bears' Picnic. My guess is that baby will face them down and they'll pack in CWL-BHD pretty quickly. If they don't and baby run away from BFS, flybe will be empowered - and dangerous. And if baby don't fight them, then it will show baby's commitment to CWL is not what it might be. Baby will fight.
As for Globespan - I wouldn't be surprised if they will do some of the IT work à la ThomsonFly/XL rather than sell scheduled. Wonder if one of this year's operators overcommitted to the tour operators a bit and now they are fishing for extra seats? Wouldn't be the first time....