Air Wales cease CWL-MAN route
 

Check this link out for full story....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/...00/1505452.stm

Must be losing money hand over fist. How long will it take for the rest of it to go down the Cardiff drain?

Interesting bit in the BBC story about starting a CWL-EWR service. A logical link for a fledgling company operating to MAN and ORK. Must have been smokin' some fancy stuff in the valleys!

Sadly there never seem to be many Air Wales pax hanging around CWL. I hope it works out, if only because, as a Welshman, I want to see Wales have it's own airline.

However it's a commercial world and if there ain't the demand, well you can't run a business with no income, can you?

Not too long ago I hard someone say the Manchester flights were going great guns, similar to what they're saying about Cork in this report. I'm hoping for the best but fearing the worst.

Another fine decision based on a complete inability to sell anything properly. Nothing wrong with CWL/MAN in fact BA carried 9500 pax on the route when they last operated it but as I have said before with no reservations system, no interline agreements and no marketing what chance did it ever have. I am sure a proper airline will now take the route over and make a success of it, especially if they fly CWL/MAN/NCL. What about it Gill? All very sad really.

Yes Cork is doing much better but then so it should be in the middle of the Summer, how will it fair in deepest darkest Winter and at what rate are the seats being sold.

I understand that the owners of Swansea are now considering an interest in Air Wales which might is a good thing since at least they are commercially minded but they too will quickly lose a million or so unless dramatic changes are made to the top level management or total lack of it.

Operationally good, commercially a joke!!

Still what would I know......

CWL-MAN-NCL did well for DanAir around 1980!
Seem to remember it used to serve BOH as well.

That was a "round robin" with a Nord 262.
CWL-MAN-NCL-MAN [or BHX] HRN-CWL and "reverse",.
Also an Avro748 [GARAY] I think. [Three fire warning lights between the Airfield and POL, the crew then called it a day :eek:
we aim to please, it keeps the cleaners happy

Chiglet

Are you really that old to have been an ATCA in the days of G-ARAY. Yep, I remember the Nord 262 well, the only one ever to appear on the UK register.

Oh, nostalgia!! ;) ;) ;) ;)

Air Wales thread

Hey Chiglet, you're going back a bit aren't you. If you can remember the Nord 262, you must be pre 1976!! Them were the days. When customs at LGW only let you bring in 4 cans of beer, bought in the aircraft bar!

Here's a new line....Jon Horne the MD at Sheffield is soon to become the new MD at Cardiff.

Air Wales are shortly to commence schedules from Swansea.

Scottie, bof
Yep I REALLY am that old :D
I joined in 1969, after 5 years in the RAF.
As a "spotter" I remember'AYs first ILS apc at Manch.
we aim to please, it keeps the cleaners happy

That'll be the new long awaited Swansea-Newark service then or wait is it Swansea- Cork and Swansea-Dublin?

Well at least its faster than the ferry to Cork but kinda think Ryanair will be faster Cardiff-Dublin and er.... cheaper, more comfortable, etc etc....

Nothing against Swansea but pick a route that isn't being flown by a low cost carrier from an airport just up the road!!!

Still what would I know...

Chiglet,

Just a quickie, sorry to jump in like this , what is the min height that the commercials get down to at POL? :confused:

To [ALL]
Out of interest, I was a Runway Controller when Manchester had two [2] PROPER runways!
06/24 and 10/28 [I wasn't there when 19/35 (I think :eek: ) was operational :D
we aim to please, it keeps the cleaners happy

I have been working for Air Wales for some time now, and yes the CWL-MAN route has been dissapointing but the Cork route has been very successful and if we where close to going bust why would we have a new aircraft being delivered in September, we shall be announcing new routes in the next few weeks. :)

Oh right! You must be the one who is going to fly the 747 on the SWS - EWR route then...?

Daifly being a PPL you know nothing about aviation you are basically lowestform of life in aviation narrow minded and to thick to make it in the professional world, go away small timer and get a life, if they offered you a job you would take it but you are unlikely to make it with that attitude. :p

One new route to be announced will be Luton – Liverpool. Air Wales flight numbers have already been appearing on the departures boards at LTN in error. Can’t imagine a 228 having the same appeal as a shiny new 737 particularly in the autumn and winter months when LTN disappears for days in fog.

Capt Kirk - you're forgetting Rule Number One of any JHE Enterprise ... it's there to increase the balance of his offshore accounts!

I hear on the grape vine that his expense claims have made interesting reading... even Jeffrey Archer couldn't have come up with some of the stuff JHE has! :D :eek: :D

As for Mr Thomas ... doesn't he know that the way you become a millionaire in this game is by starting off as a billionaire? I suspect that even owning half of Swansea won't be able to keep JHE in the lifestyle to which he's become accustomed for too long!!

It's a great pity, because with proper management - especially commercial - and a decent res system they could be a nice little operation.

CAPTAIN CHAOS - I do not know Daifly but your comments are totally unwarranted and out of line, he/she might only have a PPL but clearly understands a lot more about the commercial realities of running an airline than you do. He/she is quite right as is Captain Kirk unless there is a total change at the top of Air Wales it will go down the drain and lose another million or so. Any life support put in by the Swansea Airport brigade will only prolong the agony unless they get someone with a COMMERCIAL brain on board.

When you are next sitting in your Do228 and look back at the cabin with even 10 or 12 people sitting there ask yourself what each of them paid, then do the sums on costs and it doesn't take Carol Vordeman to work out it isn't going to add up to even a break even position. I have said it before I will say it again Air Wales is a good idea with potential to give Wales a national airline but tragically is being run by an MD who is not capable of doing the job.

Groundhog

Stiil what would I know......

Any news on the round-Wales flights announced last October? Will these services be among the new routes to be announced soon?

Sorry to be so damn picky chiglet - but being runway controller on 19/35 could have been fun - a runway with an RET built in ?
Keep up the good work Chig !

[ 25 August 2001: Message edited by: fragul ]

fragul,
As I said...it was "only" 06/24 and 10/28.
'tother r/w was then taxyway 3 [Fantail to T2 apron]. Any oldish OS map shows it quite well :D
we aim to please, it keeps the cleaners happy

Yeah , got that bit Chig, I were just having a chuckle at the prospect of anyrunway 19/35 ;)
if you see what I mean.......

ok,OK,Ochuffin'K
so I mide a mistook. OF COURSE, I meant 17/35..only ONE pi55take so far....
observant lot, aren't they/we?
Excuse 1, I was bladdered.
Excuse 2, I never saw "that" runway in operation.
Observation 1 I also was u/t Runway Controller at Liverpool, but wasn't there long enough :p
we aim to please, it keeps the cleaners happy

Come now Chiglet, that third runway was 02/20. Even saw an EI Viscount
land on it. :eek:

Air Kilroe gave MAN-CWL a go with the Jetstream (5 years ago?), and it
was working at the time. Whether they (now Eastern Airways) will take it
on again remains to be seen. I would have thought that there was more
potential in that route, than a MAN-HUY one.

[ 25 August 2001: Message edited by: Rockwell ]

Sorry for getting a little angry earlier it just im fed up of people saying we are going bust, they have been saying it since we started. One of the reasons man has not been as successful is because we could not get the amount of slots we wanted business men would go up in the morning but not wait till the night to come back, cork however has been doing real well most flights are full and is making good profit so good we have had to put on more flights, big plans for the next year are planned with new aircraft and we have good financial backing so we are not worried we all have to start somewhere. ;)

Please excuse Captain Chaos - he's a bit hot headed. Truth is Air Wales is OK. We've learnt a lot from CWL-MAN. It didn't work out and now we're gonna try something else. We'll get there in the end... :cool:

Wow - Captain Chaos. All that judgemental crap from one post...! I've followed Air Wales from the start, for the one simple reason that they are a small regional airline, which is exactly the same type of operator as me. I was born in Wales, brought up in Wales, worked in aviation in Wales before having to leave to come to London to seek my "Aviation" fortune.
I have no desire to go into flying professionally - it's really not my idea of fun flying the same routes day in day out, however I am well placed in the industry and speak to all levels on a daily basis - unlike, I assume, yourself who just gets to sit at the sharp end having a pop at management.

My comments on Air Wales are, therefore, pretty well founded, having followed them closely from the start. We've all seen operators come and go, and the majority have been because of the boom and bust mentality of believing that they are invincible. Just because of a succesful Cork route (all credit) it does not follow that a CWL-EWR route would be successful. It's always going to be at major competition from the flag carriers out of London. Having seen that Air India are offering £219 rtn LHR departures, there are few people who would not drive to London for that price. I cannot envisage that Air Wales would be able to offer that kind of price, even with the cross subsidy available from the Cork service...

I'm happy to be corrected on factual errors, but please don't pass judgement on me that because I'm "only" a PPL I'm not really that qualified to pass comment on the situation. There's a little bit more management experience here than simply going on about how my inflight catering's bad, the routing's wrong, the transport late etc.

Aviation is a funny business, it's like the NHS in investment terms. You can always throw money into these things, but unless the management structure is such that it will build the company it is, as Groundhog says, prolonging the agony.

I'm hopeful that Air Wales will go on, I'm not entirely convinced there's a market in around Wales air services - after all, if there was, they would be operating the Cardiff-Swansea-Aberporth-Llanbedr-Caernarfon-Hawarden-Welshpool-Cardiff already. But they're not. After Labour's "New Deal" for Transport there was lots of scope for a (semi-) Government funded service, but I doubt that such money has been made available to the Assembly. After all, Mr Prescott (he who holds the Transport purse strings - despite what the AM's say) must have more pressing issues to fund. Certainly there's no Objective funding available for this type of service at present.

Reach for the stars by all means, but just sit back one day and start counting the number of operators who are still around who went from operating a couple of turbines straight into a transatlantic route...

Still Captain Chaos 747 - when this time next year you're reporting at FLOSI (geez, what kind of a pun is that) with Y Ddraig Goch inbound to EWR please feel free to have a pop at me and my "PPL" knowledge...

Go Daifly. Well said.

I thought with the assembly in Cardiff there are at least a Dorniers worth of Assembly Members from North Wales each week who would relish not having to drive the miserable North/South Wales road... and they'd have nice big travel budgets.

WWW

Just what we need in the London TMA, Dornier 228's flying the Luton -Liverpool sector.

Slow, dont climb, certainly do not descend and only carry 19 people in un-pressurised brain numbing mayhem!!

Air Wales, I thought EuroCeltic wanted this route?

I have heard it all before but I say again the bottom line is Air Wales is not going anywhere unless it becomes commercial in action and thought and that will not happen without a fundemental change in top management and that requires investment in the right people at the right price. You can talk about Round Wales services, Transatlantics or flying to the Moon but get the overheads out of control and the marketing wrong and your dead.

I know its boring but as soon as Mr Thomas starts believing that he stands a chance of building a solid regional airline, the potential is there but Air Wales has no one in the entire company who knows how to take advantage of it.

Desperately want to see it work if only because the team so deserve it and I am still in love with F/O CG??

On the subject of people 'always saying it will go bust' I can go back further than that and I seem to remember a certain well known Ppruner offering to plait sh*t if it ever started .... look forward to seeing it one day ???

Groundhog

Still what would I know..

Jeez, what a palarva.

Just seen this thread, wassup Chaos? I always thought you were a decent bloke. Just remember you sold pizza's for a living in the past, we all have to start somewhere.

Here's the latest update from the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/...00/1517786.stm