I see Norwegian are looking at starting flights to Canada from the regions.....

Would be great to see Norwegian schedules from CWL

You're correct, they were parked up for exactly that, it's winter and most, if not every airline runs a reduced schedule for obvious reasons. I'll be very, very surprised if we see "new" routes announced. I'm always happy to be proved wrong of course.

Flybe have released their Winter 2018/19 schedule, nothing new i'm afraid but Geneva does go 2 weekly.
Dublin is 14 weekly
Edinburgh and Belfast 12 weekly
Paris CDG 7 weekly
Glasgow is 6 weekly
Cork and Jersey and Munich are 3 weekly
Faro, Berlin, Geneva, Milan and Rome are 2 weekly
Chambery is 1 weekly

How are the forward bookings on the new QR service? My family is certainly trying to support it haha, we've got 11 family members flying out to SIN in July for a wedding, and another 5 flying to BKK for holiday in October, then 6 people flying to MNL in November. All flights were around £450-£500 return, which is great especially considering the saving in fuel driving to LHR.

No one will really know apart from the airport and the airline.
It is definitely more convenient than Heathrow!

P&O Cruises Winter 2019/20

P&O Cruises will have 4 fly cruise packages onsale flying from Cardiff Airport to Barbados for Winter 2019/20.
8th November to 22nd November 2019.
29th November to 13th December 2019.
31st January to 14th February 2020.
22nd February to 7th March 2020.
All depart and return on a Friday.
The cruises go onsale from 21st and 22nd March.
http://www.pocruises.com/find-and-b...ionids=3&departuremonths=201911,202001,202002

The new airbridge has been fitted now. Also the stands in that area will be reconfigured with 2 new ones 7L and 8R being created with 7L being the wide body stand. 8R will be inbetween 8 and 7 and stand 7 will be moved up a bit.
Also the Welsh government will invest £6 million more into the airport in return for more equity. More terminal building upgrades have been mentioned along with a logistics hub.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/business/business-news/reasons-welsh-government-made-6m-14446093

While I appreciate that state aid is a dark art, does make you wonder what does qualify as state aid if this doesn't. Shame this sort of facility isn't available to all airports in the UK.

Advantage of having our own government is that infrastructure like airports can be run more for the benefit of the country and the government can take a longer view investment wise.

And besides an RAF base in Angelsey and an Airbus facility on the border with England precisely how many commercial airports would that be?

Doesn't really matter whether it's 1 or 5.

On CWLs twitter account they have tweeted about an announcement tomorrow by one of the airports airline.
https://twitter.com/Cardiff_Airport/status/977987924766707712?s=19

Yeah I’ve seen that tweet, an existing airlines making an announcement today......I wonder what it’ll be ?

New BE destinations ?
New FR destinations ?
New MT destinations ?
Long haul from MT ?
New TUI destinations ?

TUI - extra based aircraft from Summer 2019
 

Looks that TUI will base a third shorthaul aircraft as of summer 2019 with new routes to Dubrovnik and Naples. No longhaul announcement though, Doncaster gets an Orlando route.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/business/business-news/tui-adding-more-destinations-choice-14454913

That’s quite a nice surprise announcement from TUI, so HRG appears to be year round now, new flights to NAP & DBV and extra flights to MAH, PFO and a few others.

3 aircraft based for Summer 2019

Balkan Holidays have put Summer 2019 onsale. It's 1 weekly on Sundays from 12th May to the 23rd of September and it will go 2 weekly with the addition of a Thursday flight from the 18th July to 12th of September. Flight times for both Thursdays and Sundays are BOJ-CWL 10.10-11.50 CWL-BOJ 12.40-18.10

Qatar Airways inaugural flight to Cardiff on the 1st May will be with an A350.

What is your source young man?

The Qatar Airways twitter feed and I've seen screenshots of messages in which their customer service people confirm it. It'll be good pr for the route and the airport and the wings are made in Wales as well.

Qatar A350
 

Post on Qatar Airways Twitter feed from the airlines Vice President of marketing.

Diolch yn fawr

Great way to sell the comfort of the Dreamliner that will be operating the route......?

Well there is a Welsh connection in that the A350 wings are made in Wales and i also believe that they launched Dublin the same way.

Tunisia returns with TUI
 

Looks like TUI are also returning to Tunisia from CWL for Summer 2019.

Enfidha flights are available for booking, every Friday with TUI flight numbers as of May 2019.

I wonder why this was not announced last week along with DBV, HRG & NAP ??

This is what Summer 2019 looks like for CWL at the moment. All flights look like they are on TUI aircraft.

Bourgas 1 weekly Monday
Dubrovnik 1 weekly Thursday NEW route
Larnaca 1 weekly Sunday
Paphos 2 weekly Wednesday and Sunday increase of 1 weekly flight
Hurghada 1 weekly Monday
Corfu 2 weekly Monday and Friday increase of 1 weekly flight
Heraklion 1 weekly Tuesday
Kefalonia 1 weekly Tuesday
Kos 2 weekly Wednesday and Saturday increase of 1 weekly flight
Rhodes 2 weekly Wednesday and Saturday increase of 1 weekly flight
Zante 2 weekly Thursday and Sunday increase of 1 weekly flight
Naples 1 weekly Wednesday NEW route
Faro 1 weekly Thursday
Alicante 2 weekly Tuesday and Saturday
Gran Canaria 1 weekly Saturday
Ibiza 3 weekly Monday, Wednesday and Saturday
Lanzarote 2 weekly Thursday and Sunday
Malaga 2 weekly Wednesday and Sunday
Menorca 3 weekly Monday, Friday and Saturday increase of 1 weekly
Palma de Mallorca 6 weekly Monday, Tuesday, Friday x2, Saturday and Sunday increase of 1 weekly flight.
Reus 1 weekly Tuesday
Tenerife South 2 weekly Tuesday and Friday
Enfidha 1 weekly Friday NEW route
Antalya 1 weekly Thursday
Dalaman 2 weekly Monday and Thursday decrease of 1 weekly flight
44 weekly flights
In summary TUI Summer 2019 is 3 based aircraft, Paphos, Corfu, Kos, Rhodes, Zante, Menorca and Palma de Mallorca each get an extra weekly flight. Dalaman goes down from 3 weekly to 2 weekly. Total of 44 weekly flights.
Naples, Dubrovnik and Enfidha are new routes while Hurghada goes year round.
On the holiday website there are also holidays available for Montenegro using the Dubrovnik flights.
On Friday 1 aircraft does a W pattern to Corfu for Bournemouth.

Probably because it's not a new route as it's already onsale with Thomas Cook.

The inaugural Qatar Airways flight on Tuesday 1st May 2018 will be on an A350 900 and will arrive at 12.50 and depart at 15.55.

Stats for March 2018 from the airport.
96,767 passengers passed through the airport up 11% on 2017.
The rolling year was 1,488,000 up 10% on 2017.
https://www.cardiff-airport.com/news...senger-growth/

The suggested routes for the new bypass from the M4 to the A48 have been released for consultation.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/business/business-news/exact-routes-new-road-linking-14537704

The official opening of the new departure lounge is happening this morning. Also noticed that some of the seats now have charging points.
Also work is being undertaken to create 2 new stands and reposition stand 7 for the new airbridge to get everything ready for Qatar who start flying to Cardiff in 13 days time.

As part of the new upgrades Cardiff Airport now has a new business lounge called 51°.
www.cardiff-airport.com/news/2018/04/18/cardiff-airports-terminal-improvements-unveiled/

All they have to do now is earn the money to make the re-payments! :ok:

Yep and the more people coming through the airport the more they earn!

Why is QR down to 5 times per week instead of initially launched daily for first few months, take up less than expected?

Perhaps launching during ramadan and lower travel period wasn't a good idea. Most routes see a dip in numbers.

Discussed above. QR have blamed delays in delivery for this. Goes daily from June.

Fares for the first week are still quite low. Off to Aus the start of May and looked at the fares. They do increase later on which suggests that take up has been ok. Obviously only QR and CWL will know. The business fares remain consistent with some of the saver business gone already.

We all know that it’s a gamble but I’m sure the experts have done their research. I expect (just a gut feeling) that they’ll convert the 788 to 321neo when delivered.

The key factors will be cargo and the take up of the Business Class cabin. The route is new and will take time to mature just like the Flybe routes when they first started and no one knows what they'll use the A321neo for.

At least Qatar have deep enough pockets to give the route a chance to develop. Were Flybe not the beneficiaries of generous sweeteners from the airport owners (coincidentally the Welsh government) you may find that they would be a deal ruthless with regard to route performance.

The proof of all puddings is what happens when the deals (and the same goes for Doncaster in that respect) run out.

Flybe have said they are looking at a 4th based aircraft for 2019 and the agreement was for 2. They must be happy and see a future at CWL to publicly say they are thinking of it.
People criticise the Welsh government for incentivising Flybe yet that happens all over the industry in various ways from cheap handling fees, free marketing, to giving certain airlines the best gates, in the end Cardiff needed a based airline to develop a route network and Flybe needed a home for some jets.
Qatar start in 8 days time and I'm sure Mays stats will be interesting to see!

Incentives are part and parcel of all industries, and of course airports are no exception, however if it hadn't been for a political decision many years ago most UK airports would probably still be quasi public owned. Fact is that in both Scotland and Wales the governments have taken steps to wrest control back into public hands, which could, in some cases put some English airports at a disadvantage.

As I suggested, it's not from where the incentive comes or came, it's the commercial decisions that may be made after incentives run out, and that applies to all airports. When the E195s have gone, which won't be that long now, Flybe will be under pressure to put their fleet resources where they make the biggest return and it will be interesting to see where that is, and given the reduction in overall capacity, where the axe will fall - not necessarily at Cardiff, could be anywhere, including their major bases - MAN, BHX and SOU.