Guessing not Cardiff? What airlines did you look at? Qatar? KLM? Interesting as Qatar just had a sale but i've no doubt there is a lot of capacity on LHR-SIN. There will still be a lot of leakage to London but with Qatar starting the leakage will be less than before, and hopefully in the future the airport will attract more airlines and routes to lessen the leakage some more.

I was looking at Qatar. Shame as I'd rather use the new route from my local airport.

Same old problem with Qatar, a 7.75 hour stopover in DOH on the return journey for anything like a reasonable fare

We can sit here pricing up flight comparisons all day long. The same could be said if you compared flights from different Scottish or Irish Airports. The point trying to get through is CWL IS starting to be competitive with better value from FR, BE, VY and QR. Sometimes it'll work for some, sometimes it wont.
Many people have flown into 2nd rate airports for FR for years and now DY in the US because of price. Many flyers are price driven and won't worry about other factors.

A previous poster suggested a catchment area of south-west England, I previously used Taunton as an example, if I lived in Taunton and wanted to travel to/from BKK do you reckon that I would fly from CWL to occupy 4.75 hours in DOH on the outward and 7.75 hours in DOH on the return when for the sake of an extra hour or whatever in the car I could choose from an abundance of services from LHR probably achieving 2 hours or similar connections en-route if not direct services?

1.46 million passengers and 9% growth for 2017.
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/busine...2100#ICID=Android_WalesOnlineNewsApp_AppShare

QR are starting off with too many flights, they should really try with 3 flights a week and go from there. That said I'd be surprised if they were still at CWL by this time next year.
I try to be optimistic but not many people will consider CWL even from South Wales. I haven't seen any advertisements about Qatar flying from CWL. Maybe there are some in Cardiff but not everyone live there!

Anyhoo KLM charge too much on flights from Cardiff next month I'm going to Vancouver and returning from San Francisco. Flights with KLM(&friends) but there were 2 connecting flights each way for £444.
Flights from Heathrow with other airlines would cost £390 with 1 connecting flight each way.
So which one do you think I chose?

Inverness of course! Flying with BA INV-LHR-YVR-SFO-LHR cost me £238. Including getting to Inverness and cost of hotel for one night cost me a total cost is £295. So happy days;)

As for Qatar it has to be at least 5 weekly to attract the business passengers and i highly doubt they'll go to all the effort just to scrap it after 8 months! Personally I think the route will do fine and I laugh when people complain about CWL not having routes but then when they get them complain it won't work!
There has been plenty of advertising of the route on all media Wales Online seem to do an article including it every week! And I've seen advertising at Temple meads and Cardiff Central. Also Qatar is advertising Cardiff on the front of their web page right now.

I fly will KLM a lot and always find them cheaper and easier than Heathrow and I'm not the only one.

Enjoy Inverness i hear it's a lovely place and hopefully one day Flybe might operate the route from CWL.

Cardiff Airport have presented their annual update to the Senedd.
https://www.cardiff-airport.com/news/2018/01/24/annual-update-marks-another-successful-year-at-wales-national-airport/

So £55 will get you travel to Inverness, plus a hotel, plus travel out to INV? And both ways?

TUI's Antalya route will be operated by Freebird Airlines on Mondays and the Friday Dalaman flight will also be operated by them.
AYT-CWL 16.45-19.25 CWL-AYT 20.25-02.45 FHY591 and FHY592
DLM-CWL 06.00-08.20 CWL-DLM 09.20-15.30 FHY593 and FHY594

That is the same reason I use LHR instead of Norwich Harry.

I like to fly direct and on airlines I enjoy.

When I flew LHR/CEB it was a 1 hour connection in HKG,when I flew BHX/HKG it was a 55 minutes connection in ZRH, 5 or 8 hour connections are simply not acceptable except perhaps to a budget traveller.

When i flew PDX-CWL last November i had a 55 mins connection in AMS my flight was delayed and i had 15 mins to get to my gate and made it with 2 mins to spare for my flight to Cardiff. Short connections have risks. Plus it depends what days you fly on on the connection times.

I would have thought that some leisure travellers, not necessarily budget ones, would welcome a decent break of journey, perhaps more than 24 hours to allow their body clock to start adjusting.

Not everyone is making a flying visit!

Except that it cuts short their holiday by a day or whatever, if the price was right I might opt for a something like 15+ hour stopover, time for dinner, a few beers and bed in a hotel before back to the airport but what use is 4.75 or 7.75 hours, too long to sit around an airport and not long enough to go to a hotel.

As for connections via AMS to/from CWL, indeed I regularly did connections via AMS to/from BHX, I don't mind AMS so much, there is the Murphy's Irish Pub in the terminal to go for a pint of the second best black stuff and a toasted sandwich.

Those complaining of connection times. You realise CWL is not the only airport on the QR network? the CWL route will not feed nicely into every single destination, just like it wouldn't do via AMS or CDG. I've had 5 hour long waits in both airports while on my way to/from EDI. I don't belittle KLM/AF because of it. It may not connect well with some destinations, it may connect well with others. They will have done their research and will have determined what works for them and will adjust as they go on if necessary. I believe there are different flight times on different days so some days the flights will connect better at different times. This is common on the UK/Ireland QR network, with EDI, MAN, BHX and DUB all having similar frequencies. QR also offer free stop overs and city tours of Doha on longer connections to break up the time and offer people something more than the airport to look at. It's all on their site.

It is quite strange to see some people actually being negative about CWL getting a long haul route. Truly bizarre. Go and use LHR (or INV) all you want, all you'll be doing is starving your local airport of a revenue, which will just do more harm in the long run.

EL,

Your profile suggests that you live in EDI so besides GLA and perhaps NCL you are stuck with it and need to take whatever flight options are available locally.

The difference with CWL being that QR, I believe, designated it as a destination to serve south-west England, or was it south-west UK.

I was a traveller to/from Asia, where I now live, and for each trip I would browse thru the various travel and airline websites, I wouldn't have had a problem utilising QR except that to compete on fare with competitor airlines one needed to layover in DOH for perhaps 18 hours in one direction and the incdonvenience, the loss of a day's holiday, the cost of a hotel and visa, well the three airlines that ultimately won my business were Swiss from BHX, KLM from CWL and Cathay from LHR.

From EDI you don't have similarly convenient alternatives but from south-west England, indeed south Wales itself, you do with BHX and the LON airports, the problem isn't with CWL, the problem is QR connections via DOH and there are plenty of alternative airlines from the other airports.

Here here! :ok:
It's almost as if some people don't want the route to work. The fact is, there is now a Middle East connection from Wales and the Southwest. How the general public wish to utilise that will become evident throughout the year. Personal preference will be the decider and despite the belief of some, there are many different options that people will choose. Some convenient, some not so. Every connecting Airline will offer a cheaper alternative for a longer connection. When I checked out the EK flights HW was referring too, guess what, the cheaper flights had longer connections, and they were from LGW, not LHR.

You may wish to point out to Bristol Airport, advertising as the "Airport serving the Southwest and South Wales"
It's about marketing and attracting people from wherever you can attract them from.
There's enough people that travel from South Wales and the Southwest to the Midlands and London. Bristol is quite rightly trying to win them back, and so should CWL become a player in widening it's catchment.

You need to get over this Wales vs England thing, similarly there is a poster on the Yorkshire airport threads that clearly has a problem with Lancashire!