As a long time civil aviation 'anorak' and being Welsh, I too have been amazed at the rise of BRS from it's early days in the 70's with Courtline 1-11's together with the somewhat rarer Dan-Air 727's (I flew on one to Corfu from BRS!!), and then subsequently sat at what at the time was a considerably larger and better equiped airport whilst plane spotting across the bridge only to be faced with one or two movements per day!!
Usually Cambrian Viscounts until BA pulled the plug.
Yes we(CWL) got Laker Dc-10's plus the Wardair & CPAir 747 Transatlantic flights but despite it's apparent ability to cope with said traffic it produced no long term gains across the board. The final nail was the GO decision.
I agree with bristolflyer that given the pesent economics downturn and the rise of the tree huggers, the likely large scale expansions of either airport will be hard to see, and yes expansion will come about more in the form of larger aircraft on certain routes.
The replacements of the soon to be retired F70's of KLM will be interesting?
CWL will continue to underperform relative to BRS but that's all down to historical activities, and I for one don't begrudge BRS for one moment.
Personally if I was the airport management I'd be looking at everyway I could to boost the airports capacity and runway length without the need for any planning permission.
If only to kick the tree huggers were it hurts
