No First Choice long haul from BRS in summer 08? Where did this come from?
According to the First Choice website there are weekly flights to Sanford and Cancun.
At present there is no First Choice long haul from BRS in the winter of 08/09 but they are expected back in summer 09, unless of course the amalgamation with TUI leads to a change of strategy.
I think CWL's (and EXT's) best chance of taking routes that might have gone to BRS is in the BRS management's delay in submitting planning applications for their expansion plans until next year (2½ years behind the original publicly-stated timescale).
Given the almost certain scenario that a planning enquiry will ultimately eventuate, meaningful expansion of the airport (if it is permited) will not come on line until 2010 or 2011.
In the meantime passengers numbers carry on growing inexorably with nearly 7 million expected in 2008, and the airport will have to make ad hoc improvements that will not need planning consent.
It has already started by designating former landside parts of the terminal as airside.
Eventually punters will become dissatisfied with the incessant over-crowding and it does not need a degree in rocket science to see that so will airlines.
The CWL management will have to be on the ball though if they want to take advantage of BRS being a victim of its own success because there is an airport equally convenient as CWL to much of the Greater Bristol population just down the M 5 - there is no doubt this is why the BRS owners were so keen on buying EXT. There is also another along the M 5 in the opposite direction.
In fact, because Bristol is surrounded by so many other airports (EXT, CWL, BHX, SOU, BOH, with LHR along the M 4) some people have argued the city does not need its own airport at all.
Now
that would be good news for CWL.
