Cardiff airport

Loganair have already taken over the Edinburgh route, commencing end of the month with 10 weekly flights.

Wizz Air to add 9 routes and open a permanent base at Cardiff Airport, creating 40 jobs.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-551 ... ebook_page

This is great news as Cardiff really needed a large low cost airline. Hopefully this is just the start for wizz from Cardiff.

They should do okay. Getting to Bristol is such a faff and adds to the cost for price-sensitive travellers. Admittedly the destinations are the usual suspects for now but I guess you always start off with the most popular routes,

That's very good news for our airport and let's hope things expand for wizz air there!
all it needs now is to get fly for beans back on board!! (a blast from the past there that dedicated, seasoned forumers may recall!!)

Oh God, I'd fogotten Fly for Beans. Worst name for an airline ever!

Yay, Dublin's back!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-58246062

Having flown from Cardiff Airport this weekend, I can’t help but feel the Welsh Government takeover is not working for our national airport. I was proud when Qatar Airways announced the Doha route and felt this would be the catalyst for an improvement of quality and a better future for Cardiff airport. Again, I was impressed when Wizz Air announced their arrival, but my experience at the airport was borderline depressing. The building doesn’t feel fit for purpose and the infrastructure is old and substandard. The departures hall on the ground floor was disorganised and painfully understaffed (one member of staff overseeing the self-service bag drop and manned desk). The security area is dark and claustrophobic. The Duty Free area is dimly lit, scruffy and the quality of the fit-out is poor. It’s so un-aspirational, it doesn’t entice you to make a single purchase. (Again, manned by only one staff member.)

Despite the refurbishment and investment (ahead of the Qatar arrival), the departure lounge feels dated and the amenities are minimal. The bar and Costa were both at full capacity, but product availability at the bar was poor. Just two draught beverages on tap and extortionately priced food items. The toilets were in an appalling condition and smelt disgusting. Considering we were the first flight of the day, I couldn’t understand why they were in such dire condition?! My final observation is that the airport was absolutely freezing. There were a lot of people complaining about the air conditioning. This personally didn’t effect me, but there were a lot of older people saying they felt uncomfortably cold.

In summary, the airport is uninspired and feels thrown together. It simply doesn’t compare to Bristol in any shape or form. Other than convenience, I can’t see why anyone would choose to fly from Cardiff. It feels like the airport is operating on a shoe-string. If I were an airline considering Cardiff Airport as a potential base, I’d think again on the basis of the customer experience, infrastructure and operations.

It doesn’t feel like Cardiff Airport will turn the tide until it receives a significant face lift. At the same time, a re-haul can’t be justified until passenger numbers increase. It’s a difficult cycle!

Does anyone else have any thoughts? I really had high hopes for the airport, but felt really disappointed.

It's a difficult job when trying to run a loss making business, they'll need to be stemming the losses by keeping the payroll as low as possible. Much easier when it's good times and every day is busy. Although there is no excuse for poor cleanliness, it doesn't take much to keep a few loos clean.

The issue for the WG is that they've thrown a lot of money at this, including a large loan more recently, and there's no justification to throw more when it's a handful of flights a day.

Getting more airlines and flights should be the absolute priority and the rest can follow when the fees start flowing in. I heard their airline fees are prohibitive which is a crazy way to do business when you desperately need the income.

The whole landing fees being to high is a complete myth that has made its way into “facts”. It all started when Ryanair fell out with airport back in 2006 when trying to negotiate lower landing fees than any other airline where paying for their one flight a day to Dublin. With their media pull this came to be a common held belief but this was just the usual Ryanair tricks. The fact they are now flying from the airport and have been for some years should show the whole high landing fee story to be false.

Cardiffs terminal in theory can handle 3,000,000 a year which clearly it’s nowhere near but one issue the airport has is most airlines their fly routes of similar length so it has over crowed moments followed by long periods of being empty.

Qatar was a great win for the airport and who knows they may return when fights to the eastern hemisphere start to pick up but the real chance for growth has to come from wizz. Cardiff has never had a based low cost carrier of this size before currently flying 140 aircraft with over 300 on order. Even in the days of BMIBABY they use to have a fleet of 20 aircraft.