easyJet
There was a piece on the airport website last week saying that easyJet has placed on sale at BRS 'a record number of flights and routes' for the coming winter.
I note that both EDI and GLA appear to have improved frequencies next winter with, for most of the winter, EDI operating 5 x daily on Mondays and Fridays and 4 x daily for the rest of the week except Saturdays which remain single daily.
GLA will be 4 x daily on Sundays, Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays; 3 x daily on Tuesdays and Wednesdays with, as with EDI, Saturdays remaining at single daily.
With Thomson operating an enhanced programme next winter as well as (possibly) bmi regional, BRS should begin to narrow the gap a bit between its summer feast and relative winter famine (in 2014 January saw 342,000 passengers against August's 730,000).
The latest CAA stats are for February this year and show that the airport handled 381,074 passengers in the month, up 3.5% on February 2014 (atms were up 0.8%) with the rolling 12-month passenger total 6,364,159, an increase of 3.2% on a year ago.
Great Western Cities
In recent weeks there has been speculation on the CWL thread about the Wales Assembly Government's role in providing funding for Flybe's initiative at the airport and how this might impact on BRS. Incidentally, with the publicly announced decision of two or three months ago that the WAG would make £13 million available in stages as a loan to its airport company for route development, it was always going to be extremely likely that a positive outcome for the airport would result, and I expect further developments.
What may not be so widely known is that in February the political leadership in the cities of Bristol, Cardiff and Newport agreed to form what is effectively a super city region (under the title Great Western Cities) in order to boost the Severnside economy and develop renewable energy. The cities have already formed partnerships to shape transport plans although it doesn't appear likely that the respective airports will feature in this.
Given that for many years Bristol and Cardiff have been earnest rivals in all manner of things, the coming together is an interesting concept. It remains to be seen how it will work out and what, if any, effect it will have on BRS and CWL. Bristol and Bath (another former arch rival) have been working together quite successfully in recent years to boost tourism in their regions so perhaps the spirit of co-operation is well and truly abroad.