Twin Aisle is spot on. The excitement of having a load of cheap nasty Dash 8s gracing the hallowed tarmac of CWL is nothing to get excited about. There is not one route from CWL that can bare any kind of competition. Being all emotional about how great CWL is won't change that fact ! Both FlyBe and Baby will not keep Belfast going.

FlyBe are not likely to start a crew base at Cardiff. They don't need to, everything they are interested in taking can be done from the other end or as a W pattern. That means if Baby throw their teddies out of the cot, which there is a very good chance they will !, the LOCAL aviation communtiy will lose. The LOCAL travelling community may gain in the short term but in the long term Twin Aisle is right. You can't operate the long routes unless you've got the short routes to back pack them with. NO EDI and GLA means NO Prague or Faro. Let me tell you for nothing there is absolutely NO WAY Flybe will ever put anything through CWL other than the Q400 BHX, SOU, EXT are much further up the food chain in FLYBE and the very small number of 195s they are having are already allocated. So there will be no extensive FlyBe network.

The CWL management have probably cost CWL the 4th Baby aircraft. The exact phrase used was "We are probably going to have to punish them by putting in BHX". And that was because they let TOM onto some routes that were scheduled by Baby only. As I said there are NO scheduled routes from CWL that will bare competition.

Twin Aisle is right the management need to be a lot smarter. Short term gain will lead to long term loss. As for Globespan good luck with that !

Seems that most people think that flybe won't be good for CWL unless they treat it as a proper base, but I don't think they will bother with EDI or GLA to be honest, but BHD is better for the business traveller so it does make some sense. What routes could globespan do out of CWL without going into competition with baby? Regarding baby I feel that most people like them and I certainly like flying with them but the fact that when compared with easy at BRS it seems as if they haven't tried experimenting with new routes or tried something different, they've just stuck with the same routes every year, while even EMA has better baby frequencies, inc Paris.

Can't help thinking that too much is being read into the Globespan rumours. They have only ten 737s, so putting a minimum of two in Cardiff could be a bit of a stretch for them, unless they are going shopping.

It is quite possible that they are coming on IT work of course, which means that no-one except perhaps the ThomsonFlys and XLs of this parish are going to be annoyed.

Thanks to CV by the way. I sometimes feel like the only person on here who supports Cardiff but takes a practical and realistic view for the longer term - clearly there are at least two of us!

I remember another airline saying if a LoCo comes into Cardiff we will pull out, they did just that and it was the best thing that ever happened. So now we have that very LoCo pulling the same type of trick great
And of course they showed such great loyalty to the Airport themselves by pulling out an aircraft and reducing routes so who can blame them for going out and finding other airlines.

Some very short memories here

Unfortunately, to a large extent it is. But they do deserve success. The bottom line is that the margins on most routes from regional airlines simply will not bear much competition - there simply is not the sort of demand as there is at, say, Gatwick or Stansted. So what tends to happen is that a new operator appears who spends on marketing, offers more tempting fares, and drives the incumbents out, as bmibaby did with BA (which is what I suspect Flower was getting at). Someone could do this to baby in turn, and in the fullness of time probably will.

What won't help Cardiff is (a) someone coming in and taking all the short routes away (as CV noted, you don't get PRG without EDI), and/or (b) a price war on a limited number of destinations.

Can Cardiff sustain more than one scheduled operator to the Spanish destinations? I would say yes, but it is going to be lower yield than baby are getting now. Could this happen on the PRG route? I would say no, one operator will fall off the route. Perhaps in a few years when CWL has grown a bit, but right now, no. For routes like DUB it is possible - business people need morning and evening, the general punter doesn't care but wants a lower fare - so for example, Ryanair and Air Wales co-existed quite happily on this route.

Basically, we are in danger of seeing an almighty scrap developing here, if all the rumours are true. That is in no-one's interest, least of all the people who keep the infrastructure at the airport ticking. It is up to the airport management, as I noted earlier, to keep a little bit of order, follow a strategy and get the best longer term result for the place.

This will involve the airport doing the right thing for the longer term, rather than what seems to be a good idea at the time. Uh oh...

BMED at CWL
 

[QUOTE=Wellington Bomber;3010717]All this talk about Flybe this and that gets on my nerves!!

How many times have they left routes with their tail between their legs whenever thay come up against opposition.

:D Thank god someone said it, they've only announced 1 route, anybody would think they've made a base and put in 10 a/c, BRS is a prime example of the good old FLBE tail between their legs, And do BRS management really give a toss if they pull out, hmm with 10th EZY on the way plus FR sniffing around, nah i dont reckon.
I hope it does work out well for CWL, but just cant see them being as big as your all hopeing, maybe i'll eat my words in a year, who knows, but one route and mention of future routes isn't much to go on, they announced 3-4 new routes in BRS a few years back, promising up to 15 routes, did it happen, did it heck!
I also see reading their website announcement that in the first paragraph they say " new base" and in the 2nd they say "new hub" so which is it Mr Flybe? a base in airline terms means you have crew 'based' at that airport does it not? A hub however is just somewhere you fly in and out of... well thats my take on it anyway.
Dont get me wrong I'm not CWL bashing, I do honestly hope it works out well, but I dont think i've ever seen so much hype on prune about the release of a 1 new route!

Indeed Watabench as I said in a previous post quoted above. Ryanair promised lots of routes , Baby promised a lot more than they have given but give us at least the opportunity to dream a bit :8


Oh yes another thing I posted was eggs in one basket, Bristol is EasyJet and should anything happen to them Bristol could end up like the poor neighbour across the River. :ouch:

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....

Well it says in the official statement from flybe on the airport website that CWL is it's 'new base' so it does look likely it will base here next year, assuming that CWL will get new routes as part of their new BaConnect/Flybe plan.

I have spoken to a mate in Globespan, he has confirmed they might be coming to CWL next year but as Twinaisle said it is IT work, think he said it was the 767 that would come once a week to do Orlando.

Again talking to someonelse in Baby as to why they have never expanded at CWL, when he asked why don't we do these routes the answer he generally got was because easyJet do it out of BRS.

I have to admit I do see a lot of Welsh pax on easyJet flights out of BRS.

I would love CWL to do well just so I could get a job out of my home base but I don't see anyone I would risk leaving easyJet for coming anytime in the future.

I remember years ago prior to 9/11 when I was instructing, many times in the summer I would be held at the holding point for 30 minutes or in the orbit downwind for a good 20 minutes just because of the volume of IFR traffic arriving and departing, CWL was very busy then and it seems to have gone backwards.

Nah that was just me delaying you on purpose :E

Thought so ;)

This is all very interesting news.

I must admit that I have wondered why nobody serves the usual European loco destinations from CWL (e.g. Pisa or Nice). I am not particularly interested in the "bucket and spade routes" personally and have always been disappointed that I cannot plan my journeys from Cardiff.

As for the "they'll go from Bristol" type argument- yes I have travelled from Bristol (for Italy) and Luton (for Nice), but that's because I COULDN'T travel from CWL- is this not in danger of becoming a circular argument?

For example, I wanted to travel from Rhoose to Pisa. In the end, drove to Bristol, then Bris to MXP on Bacon (Easy too expensive!!!). Overnight in Milan, then train to Pisa (still cheaper than Easy from BRS). Very gauling to drive by both CWL and Pisa Airports without being able to make the link- I could probably have been sitting on the beach at Cancun (via T-Fly from CWL) in the time it took!

Although I'm one of those people only too grateful to take advantage of the cynical and potentially short termist loco strategies, I always work out the fares very carefully (including the additional cost of car, tolls or train journeys). Surely I am not the only potential customer who may be willing to pay a little more just not to have to drag into the UK to fly?

As for the FlyBe Q400s, I am not too bothered about prop vs jet- I think that (apart from the reliability) FlyBe may have lucked out in being one of the few operators to pursue this aircraft- when the oil price went up, who was laughing then? In fact, as I now travel with a toddler, I prefer smaller planes, as there are less people to upset per journey!

At least CWL isn't "putting its eggs in one basket" (yet)- however, it does seem to attract operators who only "stick their toe in" or keep to what they know (Baby). I'm really hoping FlyBe will shake things up for the good and that more consistent and comprehensive services become established.

Look forward to being able to fly from CWL soon (hopefully!).

Daniel

PS...noticed TNT have been stationing QC aircraft at CWL, but thought that they were in freight config. Who are they operating for?

Cwl Bcn
 

Now on sale from May07 with Thomsonfly 4 x weekly

That should be an interesting route. Just hope they shout about it a bit, their advertising in Cardiff is not that hot...

...About time they released this... :ok:
TOM have got advertising all over the airport, on the TV, numerous billboards as well as those silly old men on the radio. Not to mention the advertising they get in their own shops.

One lives and learns. It all managed to pass me by. Clearly I am not their target market! :}

Must get a Burberry cap....

At the 2001 census, the population of Cardiff was recorded as 305,340.

Lovely place, but actually a medium sized town labouring under the belief that it is a Capital City. It isn't. And within 30 miles you will find several of the most poor towns in the country.

Which is why Cardiff Airport has been the death knell of so many airlines over the years, why it is currently moribund and why it will never flourish.

South Wales is all fur coat and no knickers. Some parts of Cardiff and Tiger Bay have been tarted up and sport Charlotte Church and her mates. The rest of the region languishes as a cultural and economic black hole which shudders against the chill wind of globalisation.

As for Bristol airport being "vulnerable" due to its 'dependence' upon easyJet that is akin to saying the City is dependent upon financial services. Yes it is - thank God.

Cardiff - stop looking to compete with BRS and become realistic - take lessons from Norwich.

AP

Funny post that last one....

Must have been someone who has not read any of the Avia Solutions reports, the Government White Papers on air travel, the Economic and Social Trends surveys....

Yes, parts of South Wales are having a harder time than other parts of the UK. Cf Bedminster, South London, Moss Side... all "hard done by regions" near other airports.

Cardiff is a relatively small city, agreed. But within an hour's travel live an awful lot of people. By train, even Swindon is just an hour away.

Come here, have a look. Then decide.

Anyway, I must dash. I am meeting Flower and her dogs to go begging under the railway arches.

Don't think you are taking over my pitch :8

The post above Twin Aisles is obviously written by someone who hasn't visited Cardiff and South Wales in some time. The Vale of Glamorgan in which the Airport is situated is an area which has one of the highest qualities of living in the UK, Properties in Cardiff have hit the Million Plus market and it is a strong vibrant economy. As for cultural black hole have you heard of the Wales Millennium centre.
Some one with an axe to grind no doubt, we may not have the same catchment area as Bristol, that has never been disputed but the people want to fly from Cardiff they can't get the flights hence many travelling to Bristol and Birmingham.
There was a time when Cardiff outstripped Bristol in movements, I don't think anyone is expecting in the short term for this to happen but with a bit of nerve there are long haul options which could legitimately be offered as an Alternative to the South East.

Oooo handbags at dawn! Lets not get dragged into the my aiports better than your airport debate based on such bizzare logic - take a look around Fishponds or St Pauls as an example of the sh*t holes in BRS catchment area.

Only the government is foolish enough to beleive that census statistics are a measure of population - fair few Jedi's out there as I seem to recall from the 2001 census, perhaps EZY should start flights to Dagobar? According to the census Manchester is a city of 400,000 rather than the 2.5M it really is, utter nonsense derived from atrificail local authority boundaries. As a conurbation SE Wales (Cardiff) has a population in excess of 1.5M - this is obviously something completely different to the catchment area of CWL as an airport, this is measured in travel time.

Rant over. On another note good to see TOM finally anouncing Barcelona - what happened to Saltzburg?

Wonder what else the RDF fancy chucking a couple of quid at? I hope Flybe are talking nicely to Andrew Davies!

MB

I'm in Cardiff all the time. Nonetheless:

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) published new earnings statistics for 2006 on 26 October 2006. Detailed results can be found on the ONS web http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBAS...asp?vlnk=13101


* Mean gross weekly earnings for full-time adults in Wales were £469.8 in April 2006, 87.4 per cent of the average for the UK as a whole (£537.3).

* Gross weekly earnings in Wales increased by 3.3 per cent between 2005 and 2006, compared to a 4.1 per cent increase across the UK as a whole.

* Wales had the second lowest average weekly earnings amongst UK countries and English regions in 2006, after the North East (£466.7).


So its nearly the poorest paid, its getting worse and you have to go to Newcastle to find anywhere worse. Cardiff ariports problems have nothing to do with management or operations and everything to do with a small and poor catchment area.

Lovely place and lovely people though.

AP

The figures for Wales are highly unreliable for Cardiff simply because it doesn't take into account that vast areas of mid and north wales, which are undoubtedly very poor areas of the UK yes, but are hardly catchment areas for CWL. Compare this with the GDP figures for Cardiff and the Vale alone which produce £8.335bn a year. And that's only £3bn behind Bristol, North Somerset and Gloucestershire! I recently read that by 2015 Cardiff will have narrowed the gap further. So you can hardly say Cardiff cannot support a good regional network of business flights and holiday flights - the fact is that Cardiff, if it had an airport with a few more links - would attract a lot more inbound passengers and tourists than BRS as well.

Don't forget that Swansea and West Wales don't have an airport of their own and their figures can generally be added to the CWL catchment figures. 10 -15% of CWL's pax are from the South West as well so despite the fact that BRS has better links than CWL there are still South Western pax coming to CWL, which just shows that CWL's catchment area can also extend east towards Bristol.

Probably the bottom line is that the Bristol City region is more populous and more prosperous than the comparable Cardiff one - but certainly not to the extent that the disparity in airport passenger figures and routes would indicate.

Figures provided by both the CAA and the airports suggest that both airports take approximately 10% of their passenger numbers from the other’s core catchment area, although in actual numbers it means a lot more South Wales pax use BRS than West Country people use CWL.

Bristol might enjoy two advantages over CWL in that its relative success suggests the quality of its management team is higher, and it also has a lot more well-off people who want to use their dosh for leisure travel – many of these live away from the immediate city conurbation in places like the Cotswolds and the shire counties of Wiltshire and Somerset. It is likely that some could be attracted to CWL (or to EXT or SOU or BHX) if the right product was available.

In fact, it happened to an extent when bmibaby first flew out of CWL and had very low, probably loss-leader, fares on the sun routes also flown by easyJet from BRS. For a time the Bristol Evening Post carried stories of people who lived near BRS travelling across the bridge to save money on their air fare. It largely died out when baby raised their fares to more realistic levels.

BRS master plan figures show 45% of its passengers come from the former Avon area with 25% from Bristol itself. Other significant areas that each provide around 10% or slightly higher of BRS's pax are South Wales, Devon and Somerset.

CWL on the other hand enjoys a site without the physical restrictions that occur at BRS and is able to take larger aircraft on longer routes. CWL also has access to a RDF, something not available at BRS.

If the two airports are to get anywhere near their 2015 annual passenger figure targets they will have to grow at an almost identical pace in real terms over the next nine years: CWL from 2 million to 5 million and BRS from just under 5 ¾ million to near 9 million.

ABeamPoints

You are using statistics rather as a drunk uses a lamp-post - rather more for support than illumination.

Cardiff's population is NOT the same as Wales' population. To say that Wales has a lower average income than the rest of the UK forgets a couple of key points:

1. Parts of Wales are relatively very deprived - mainly the Mid Wales farming communities. This means that the average for Wales is lowered, and DOES NOT imply that Cardiff must be poor compared to the UK.
2. Figures for the UK include the considerable skewing effect of London and the Home Counties. I would bet that all the cities in the UK are behind London in terms of growth and prosperity; why don't you present figures that compare Cardiff and the immediate hinterland (including, as Flower noted, the affluent Vale area) with, say, Bristol, Newcastle etc - rather than use the whole country's stats and try to draw local conclusions from them?

No-one here is saying that CWL should be the size of STN or LGW. We know that, like just about every other regional airport in the UK, the local catchment does just not support that. What we are saying - and MV, as ever, hits the nail on the head - is that given the catchment, the communications and the general growth in the Cardiff area, the airport should be doing sharply better than it is.

Blaming the airport for airline failures is, I am afraid to say, fatuous. Using the airport as the common factor for failed airlines is rather akin to saying that coffins kill dead people, since all dead people have them.

CWL did not kill BA - BA did that. If CWL killed BA, then I name as co-defendents PLH, MAN, BHX, BRS, ABZ and every other airport that BACon were at.

CWL did not kill Cambrian. That was BA as well.

CWL did not kill Air Wales. People who worked there know who did that.

Flower, your pitch is safe if I get Harry! :\

I seem to remember he rather got you :}

I just wanted to know really why did Air Wales collapse? I find it odd because from the news archives everywhere all you can see is 'Air Wales adds new routes', 'air wales pax boom' etc etc so why did it suddenly just dissapear?

'So its nearly the poorest paid, its getting worse and you have to go to Newcastle to find anywhere worse.'


So why has the North East - a poorer region than Wales - have an airport that boasts ryanair, easyjet as well as lufthansa and boast links to Brussels, Milan and Rome while the wealthier catchment area around Cardiff Airport doesn't?

Whatever way the numbers crunch the sad fact remains that CWL has been unable to nurture nor keep any kind of decent airline presence over the last 20 years. Hopefully that will change.

Everyone North of Brecon uses Birmingham or Manch/Lpool. Which leaves you with tiny little Cardiff all dressed up in its new dockland frock and then the horrors of Merthyr, Ponty and the rest of the economic black hole that is South Wales. Perhaps thats the real reason. Doubtless the Cardiff City Slickers and Glamorgan Cricket Club types will puff themselves into a fit of indignation but I'm Welsh and I have to drive through a lot of it and you can't deny that a lot of it is very rough.

Cheers

WWW

Now I know disagreeing with a mod is a bit of a no-no.

So let me start with the things I agree with WWW over.

Well, unfortunately pretty accurate.

Thought you worked in BRS? Not been to Bedminster then? Bits of almost every area of the planet are grim.

But.

Drivel, I am afraid.

Well, it looks a hell of a lot more affluent from where I sit than great chunks of the rest of the UK. Are we the richest bit? No. But as I said, we should have more aviation success than we do.

For the record, I don't associate with either camp.

Cardiff's biggest problem as an airport being honest is other people's attitudes - and in many cases, the attitudes of Welsh people like you, WWW. I have worked in the airline business for donkey's years, not as a pilot, but in higher management, and trust me, there is a real attitude of "Taffy wants an airline? Don't be silly". The majority of this attitude comes from people born west of Chepstow.

There is no question that South Wales in the past has suffered from economic disasters, some of us would say the Welsh Assembly Government is yet one more of those but the place is changing. It is all well and good for those who say they pass through or visit that it is some seedy backwater but those of us who live and work here would beg to differ.
As with any succesful city and we have two particularly good sized ones, Cardiff and Swansea, there is always drift towards the outlying areas, we are seeing the gentrification of many Valleys towns nowclose to the urban areas.

As a Mid Wales lady I know how the preferred option is Cardiff but as well know if you can't get the flights you go elsewhere hence the drift from Wales to Birmingham and Bristol. The passengers are there they are flying from other airports. North Wales does not come into the equation when we talk about Cardiff airport which again distorts any figures which may have been quoted.

It should be doing far better as Twin Aisle says, the sad fact is though that the only Airline of late that has put any real commitment into Cardiff was Air Wales. What a crying shame a certain someone didn't listen to the experts.

Sorry but i still standby my belief that FLYBE is good news for Cwl!
I say this because cardiff is`nt exactly fighting off the low-cost carriers,considering two are operating quite close already!As pointed out already Exeter has`nt faired to badly with Flybe.The size and capability of this airline compared to say Eastern,must be looked at ie emb 195!:)

Sorry, PiperTommy, the "flybe did well by EXT" argument won't translate to them doing their best for CWL. As I said posts and posts back, what CWL needs is someone who actually cares about CWL as their hometown airport. Remember where flybe is based!

I suggest you don't actually know this. My point in any case was that flybe being here makes life that little bit harder for anyone looking to set up a low cost base at the airport.

EMB195 at CWL? Dreaming I am afraid!

I can see your point!But we don`t know what is in store!!Why not emb 195?Got to base them somewhere:) Would be nice to have a big low cost i agree,But time is rolling on and nothing to date has happened.

Why no 195s? Cheeky Visual sussed this one pages back.

They really haven't ordered that many of these things you know...

Many people tend to forget that, whilst headquartered at Exeter, the airport was for many years the poor relation in Flybe's network. Only services to Belfast, Dublin and the Channel Islands were operated. Since the new services began to be introduced a couple of years ago Exeter has boomed. Why should Cardiff not experience the same?

Because flybe won't be headquartered at CWL, perhaps? :ugh:

Exactly EGTE:ok: Guess we could go on all day about this,time will tell what there plans for Cardiff are.I`m in work today and the place is dead?

We need increased frequency on flights to Ireland, the capacity has dropped considerably since both Air Wales and Ryanair departed, Paris needs filling urgently and with only one flight per day to Glasgow that surely must be an option.
I'm told that BMI Baby could increase their frequency on both Malaga and Edinburgh and still have all the flights full.( no figures to back me up on that just hearsay)

I don't think places such as Rome ,Budapest, Nice etc would necessarily have a chance as a daily flight but maybe a number of flights a week could work?

Yet again this morning a discussion amongst non airport people ( My Physio class) they all said I want to fly from Cardiff but can't get the flights, something needs to be done.