Cardiff airport

Qatar need to sort out their airspace issues in the gulf. And naturally it's a new route, and it's not a route to Spain, it needs time to mature. People aren't immediately thinking to look at Cardiff when booking trips the Middle East, Asia, Australia etc. Although the marketing has been great people are still learning about this route, and you don't exactly book to fly next week typically long haul. Cardiff for a few years has suffered with that reputation of being expensive and flying to nowhere. Neither are true if you have the right dates and the right destination. Qatar has some fantastic offers but some are being overlooked by the airports reputation. The culture of that is slowly turning around, but it's going to take time and marketing money.

The passenger numbers are not the most important factor for the airline, but it is the most important factor for the airport. The airline is after a healthy yield, which is achievable from the cargo and buisness class passengers. But the airport needs healthy passenger numbers to sell to future airlines and to possible investors.

The cargo is busy on these flights, the first flight I was on was at capacity with cargo. And as we were told, Qatar are in this for the long haul and plan on building a warehouse at the airport to manage the cargo. This route isn't going anywhere right now.

But at the end of the day, Qatar are a business who need to make money. If planes of low PAX are happening two years from now, it doesn't spell good for the routes existence. I'm pretty positive it will be successful in the long run.

The airport has now had 15 months on consequative growth. May 2018 was up 12% from 2017, that's an extra 18,000 passengers. The arrival of Qatar has clearly helped. For the year it's now surpassed 1.5m point and is likely to reach between 1.6 and 1.7m passengers for the 2018 calendar year.

Thomas Cook Airlines has said that it will introduce Easter 2019 flights from Cardiff airport for the first time.

As per the plan, Thomas Cook Airlines has added over 15,000 seats to destinations including Turkey, Majorca, Tenerife, Lanzarote, Cyprus and a new route to Enfidha in Tunisia. The airlines will operate 11 flights a week starting from April 3, 2019 until the end of that month.

With the new routes, Thomas Cook Airlines now flies to 12 sun and beach destinations from Cardiff and has over 120,000 seats on sale throughout 2019 (Easter and Summer). Tickets are now on sale via www.thomascookairlines.com.

http://www.travel-news.co.uk/11085/2018/07/thomas-cook-airlines-announces-european-destinations-from-cardiff-airport-for-easter-2019/

Add to that TUI are now selling holiday to the Far East from Cardiff using the Qatar flights. All good news for the airport

I flew out of CWL to DOH last Saturday. Economy was at less than 50% capacity, and business class only had a few people. It is a definite improvement over the KLM CLW/AMS route IMHO in terms of quality and convenience. I really do hope it manages to become economically sustainable.

Qatar numbers are lower than normal across their network I due to the blockades. They seem happy with Cardiff though with fights now on sale until July 2019.

The last two long haul flights i was on were both less than 50% full - from Amsterdam. The last month is a low season but will be interesting to see passenger numbers over summer holiday period.7

CAA Stats for May 2018
The airport saw 164,897 passengers through the terminal up 12% on last year. The rolling 12 month total was 1,511,504 up 9.2% on 2017.

Doha had 2965 passengers for the month. Not too bad. But could be better. Thats roughly 30% capacity for the month. May was always going to be low-ish, with the initial flights home being almost empty. People don't fly out and back the next day. Qatar has committeed to at least 3 years at the airport. The interest statistics will be over the summer period (June/July/August) and how May 2019 compares. They need to grow the route.

152 tones of freight came through the airport in May, compared to ZERO in May 2017. This is the real money generator of the Qatar route.

All routes to Doha across the UK (Heathrow, Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh) were down. Heathrow was down 20,000pax from May 2017. The political situation in the gulf has not helped the airline.

I'm sure that I've heard it said (possibly by somebody on this message board) that the freight is what makes this route economically viable and that passenger numbers are a bonus. Anyone know if that's right?

From memory, I think QA said that the route could pay its way on freight and busiess class, i.e If both were fully booked, economy passengers would provide the profit.