TOM at CWL
I think you hit the nail on the head.
Ex FCA staff making the moves within their capacity planning. This is not a bad thing as they are coming away from competing with LCC airlines in seat only markets and concentrating on their highest yielding markets.
ie: packages which they control from start to finish.
Shops, airlines and hotels / cruise ships.
If they did not merge you would have seen their CWL base stay at 3.
Merger resulted in major reductions to up yields as they took out competition. Same with My Travel and Thomas Cook.
They also always claimed they could not make long haul pay at CWL. This was their reason for stopping Dom Rep, Cancun and Florida.
The reason for this is the Welsh Holiday makers don't want to pay much more to fly from Wales than if they got it from Gatwick. Take into account aircraft positioning and crew costs alone and you are looking at a higher cost base. Only way long haul would work at Gatwick yields is to have a long haul based aircraft. No tour operator will do that in a hurry at the moment.
I agree BRS ops to Florida stop in MAN seems crazy but they TOM seem to be locked into something that it making this continue even with cost cuts.
Don't blame the airport for the changes in strategy at TOM. It is purely TOM focussing on their margins.