Yep i do hope it'll be positive for CWL or at least the worst that happens is the E-jets get swapped for Q400s and it will depend on what sort of agreement the airport and airline could come too.

Same aircraft - G-TAWN.

G-TAWN flew on the 15th but not on the 16th so MAY have acquired a Tech that took some time to fix. Equally of course, a Winter schedule doesnt require flights every day. Whatever the case, it was on a Loser from the get-go on the 17th being 2 hours late off the blocks and didnt revover its Timings until today.

There are no TUI flights on Wednesdays between December and March at Cardiff in the winter.

CAA stats for December 2018
December saw 85,663 passengers use the airport up 7% on 2017.
1,579,286 passengers used the airport in 2018 up 7.9% on 2017.
Top 10 routes
1. Amsterdam 12,461
2. Dublin 7318
3. Tenerife South 6995
4. Edinburgh 6914
5. Doha 6449
6. Alicante 6436
7. Belfast City 5926
8. Paris CDG 4787
9. Malaga 3666
10. Glasgow 3544

Qatar Airways carried 55,568 passengers through the airport in 2018 averaging 132 passengers per flight and a 52.3% load factor.

I honestly don't have a clue and comparing Cardiff to Edinburgh is a waste of time. The route is generally doing ok and no doubt will mature over time.

Ryanair Malaga
 

Ryanair booking engine showing Malaga 3 x weekly (M, W, F) June-September. AGP-CWL 1740-1920: CWL-AGP 1945-2325.

Information is available on the link below:-

https://ukaviation.news/ryanair-to-l...t-this-summer/

Good growth from Ryanair from 3 weekly flights to 10 weekly flights!

You would have thought that CWL would want to protect the Vueling operation (they have been very good for the airport), but Ryanair do tend to generate their own market.

Hope it works for all concerned.

Vueling are strong on Malaga and especially summer peak when the flights are full. But they can only offer so much as an airline and haven't expanded the route offering at CWL.
Ryanair offer more as an airline for the airport. They are a lot more well known and will bring in new passengers for the airport and offer the chance of notonly a base in the future but a a route network that encompasses more than just Spain.

It is a catch 22 situation for the airport. It needs to grow and Ryanair do seem willing to do that and add new routes and seem to be slowly testing the South Wales market. I wouldn't be surprised if theycontinue to add more. Lanzarote would be a good one but i think may depend on whether they keep their canary island bases. Hopefully they'll look at extending more routes into the winter to test year round demand.

I also think that the relationship between the airport and Ryanair is a lot better and i don't think they'll be raising the prices like they did before!

Vueling
 

I don't think it was ever confirmed, and was always rumour that CWL wouldn't do a deal with FR that would meet FR's requirements. Things were very different back then, it must've been 2006. That was when TUI were growing, bmiBaby were still growing, there were numerous other Tour Operators like Goldtrail still going, long haul was growing and things were looking up at the Airport. I'm not sure of timescales for FR pulling out but Air Wales folder in April 2006 too. The Airport were probably being a bit over confident and thinking they didn't need to make deals with FR. Things have taken a big change since then, and there's a lot less options for CWL and Airlines to pitch towards due to so much consolidation happening in recent years.
FR seem to be working well with CWL at the moment, especially after the recent APD press release, but no Airline will favour good relationships over business, especially FR. Provided FR are getting what they want, they will stay, if they don't, they'll pull the plug. You could argue that is whats happening at BRS at the moment. EZY and TUI/TCX are dominant in their markets at the moment. Why FR haven't expanded is anyones guess. BRS may not be willing to give FR the deals they want and are comfortable that their other carriers will pick up the routes, that where FR are being stagnant and looking to the other Airports in the region, (CWL, EXT, NQY, BOH) that you could argue are desperate and all have catchments that are leaking to BRS.

Just for the record can I reiterate once again that Air Wales didn't fold or go bust or have unpaid debts. The decision was taken to cease commercial operations. Two very different things!

Ryanair has stagnated to a degree at BRS in recent summers: 2016 27 destinations; 2017 29 destinations; 2018 32 destinations; 2019 31 destinations (Reus yet to appear) but within this there have been frequency tweaks to accommodate the additional routes, giving a broadly flat pattern of overall seating capacity in recent summers.

Winter is entirely different with Ryanair expanding at BRS each winter over the past four winters (as is easyJet), from 15 destinations in winter 15/16 to 25 destinations in the current winter with seating capacity up over 60% during that period. Ryanair and easyJet have competed on the main sun routes for many years but increasingly Ryanair is replicating some of easyJet's non-sun routes such as Krakow, Venice MP and (new for this winter) Seville and Sofia.

It might not be then that Ryanair isn't getting the deal it wants with BRS but rather it recognises that CWL has been under provisioned for many years and now is the time to do something about it - in particular with the main sun routes. For example, in 2007 which was CWL's best ever year with nearly 2.1 million passengers Palma handled 170,000 passengers, Alicante 161,000 and Malaga 150,000. In 2017, despite Vueling and the charter carriers, the figures were respectively 112,000, 105,000 and 85,000.

CWL has invariably done well with its sun routes in the main summer period in terms of passenger numbers - as always I know that high loads anywhere don't necessarily bring successful yields - so perhaps it's something of a surprise that airlines haven't sought to exploit this particular market more quickly as the airport recovers from its nadir in 2012.

Vueling is not operating Barcelona from CWL in summer 2019.

Vueling dropped BCN and Ryanair took it over.
Malaga is 5 weekly same as last year
PMI is 4 weekly same as last year
Alicante is 6 weekly up 1 weekly form last year

It might be a case of that in those airports Ryanair hasn't be offered a good enough deal to expand compared to other airports across Europe. They have expanded quite a lot lately into Ukriane and Israel and Germany and the UK regional airports are up against that competition just as much as their local competition which for CWL would be BRS and BHX. I doubt APD helps many of the smaller UK airports in attracting routes from them when they can deploy the aircraft to places that don't have that.

I heard something passing on BBC Radio 4 I think it was, that in the event of a no deal Brexit (sorry for mentioning the "B" word!) the EU would permit continued operations by British carriers but capped at similar levels to 2018. I'd not heard that before, but I suppose given the preeminence of London in UK, perhaps currently the regions, away from London and Manchester are feeling the effects of a potential no deal.

I may have heard wrongly, or the information broadcast may have been imprecise, so please don't shoot the messenger!

Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on common rules ensuring basic air connectivity with regard to the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the Union

Note that this restricts UK airlines to 2018 frequencies, but EU carriers can expand.

Because it's talking about what access a non-member country will have to the EU market.

Clearly the UK will also be able to control access to it's own market.

Doubt even May's government is daft enough to do that!

So we would allow EU airlines uncontrolled access to the UK, when UK access to the EU is controlled?

Apologies for going off topic :ok:

I only say that as to do so would be (another) potentially self inflicted wound.

Cardiff Airports annual update.
https://www.cardiff-airport.com/news...l-update-2019/

737 700 for 5 weeks from KLM starting 24th February
https://twitter.com/Cardiff_Airport/status/1090619742212235264?s=19

It's an extra flight a day!

Just at Cardiff. It's a bit odd because the airport says KLM 737 700, the website then says Transavia France but then says KLM 737 800 under flight details. And Google flights apparently says Transavia! So it'll be interesting to see what happens!

It sounds like it'll be KLM operated by Transavia France.
Yeah it is a shame about Madrid. Hopefully the route will come back one day.