Cardiff Airport - General Thread

[Jerry]

Fingers crossed we'll see some flights!

 

[Jerry]

Cardiff Airport - Freedom of Information FOI – CWL

The official Cardiff Airport website for live flight information, news, airport parking, offers, booking flights & holidays.

www.cardiff-airport.com

 

[Jerry]

Cardiff Airport - Freedom of Information FOI – CWL

The official Cardiff Airport website for live flight information, news, airport parking, offers, booking flights & holidays.

www.cardiff-airport.com

On the dried fruit forum someone has reported that the new finance director is on £85-90,000 a year plus £8000 car allowance. I don't think the poster is impressed!
Apparently this is the advertised salary.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

On the dried fruit forum someone has reported that the new finance director is on £85-90,000 a year plus £8000 car allowance. I don't think the poster is impressed!
Apparently this is the advertised salary.

I don't know what a finance director earns generally - I would think it varies hugely, depending on the size of the company for starters - but I do know it's a responsible position in any company as this linked website points out.

What is the role of the finance director?

Read our factsheet about What is the role of the finance director? from the Institute of Directors. Become a member to access more essential business resources.

www.iod.com

A finance director has to be suitably qualified and as such will demand a certain level of recompense.

I've been following the debate on the Dried Fruit. It's becoming as much a debate about goverment ownership of CWL as the finance director's pay packet.

Interesting that at least three of those involved in the Dried Fruit debate are current or recent contributors to F4A.

 

[Jerry]

I've been following the debate on the Dried Fruit. It's becoming as much a debate about goverment ownership of CWL as the finance director's pay packet.

Yes they always seem to a lot of them. One good point was raised I think though in that CWL being a business with a turnover of £20.8 million in 2018-19 Director wise could be top heavy?
It has a Chairman, interim CEO, CFO, Finance director, Executive director (until October I think), 3 non executive directors. Is that too many for a business it's size? I don't know.

I don't know what a finance director earns generally -

I had a look online and a it suggested that the average was £72,000 salary wise but on the dried fruit several posters said the stated salary was low for a finance director.
Just a thought but with a finance director in place is there a need for a CFO and could Huw Lewis step into Spencer Birns previous position?

 

[mathers_wales_uk]

Huw Lewis is off to the Royal Mint so is already out the door.

 

[geoff]

I thought that the new man was replacing Huw Lewis, and taking over his duties and responsibilities.

 

[Jerry]

I thought that the new man was replacing Huw Lewis, and taking over his duties and responsibilities.

I didn't know that!

 

[mathers_wales_uk]

It is indicated within Spencer Birns statement regarding the new appointment.

Royal Mint has also issued a statement yesterday announcing the appointment of Huw Lewis as Chief Finance Officer.

Two senior staff now departed in quick succession

 

[Jerry]

It'll be interesting to see who replaces the CEO!

 

[TheLocalYokel]

There is a robust debate continuing on the Dried Plum which began with a note about the new finance director’s salary but seems to have settled into a discussion about the rights and wrongs of public ownership of CWL. I don’t really want to pursue that aspect at the moment other than to say that with Wizz Air now embarking on further consolidation in the UK - this time a new base at Doncaster Sheffield Airport - there could, I suppose, be an opportunity for the Welsh Government if it wished to make the airline an offer it would find difficult to refuse. That would likely cost many millions of pounds which might not be readily available at this particular time.

Whether Wizz or someone else (probably more than one someone else) the airport is clearly in need of a substantial boost in its passenger numbers, and I’m speaking of the time when the industry is overcoming the worst of the virus effects - currently all airports are down massively on their pre-virus plans.

Unless the WG pays silly money to airlines to operate (state aid restrictions might not apply after the UK leaves the EU at the of the year) the situation of the past two decades will not have changed. ‘Welsh’ travellers will continue to use BRS, BHX and London airports in significant numbers (North Wales travellers aren’t likely to use CWL much no matter how it develops). BRS is a particular problem because for the most part it is competing with CWL for short-haul passengers.

The WG and its airport company recognise this and both entered spirited objections to the BRS expansion planning application that was later refused by its local authority earlier this year. The airport has announced it will appeal to the national Planning Inspectorate.

The submission of the Welsh Government Department of Economic Infrastructure can be viewed at this link. Scroll down to page 192.

https://apps.n-somerset.gov.uk/Meetings/document/report/NSCPM-105-579

A letter from consultants on behalf of Cardiff Airport can be viewed at this link. Scroll down to 30 January 2020.

https://planning.n-somerset.gov.uk/...s.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=PJML85LPMKI00

There are a couple of careless factual inaccuracies in both submissions. The WG departmental letter described BRS as the UK’s third largest airport outside London and the letter from the organisation representing CWL said it was the fifth largest. It’s the fourth largest (after MAN, EDI and BHX) and was when the submissions were made. The CWL letter also mentions Plymouth Airport as one of the South West airports that could be utilised instead of an expanded BRS.

In essence both the departmental and the CWL submissions cover the same ground:

1. Expansion would be contrary to North Somerset Council’s climate strategy.

2. BRS dominates the South West corner of Britain and expansion would see an even greater market share and imbalance.

3. CWL has spare capacity and can handle additional passenger traffic instead of expanding BRS.

4. More passengers at BRS would mean even more car journeys to and from it, including Wales.

5. An expanded BRS would create more carbon emissions.

The BRS appeal is likely to involve a public enquiry. The WG and CWL could give evidence. The planning inspector who conducts the enquiry could make the decision on the appeal him or herself, but with this type of application it's more likely that the secretary of state would 'recover' the appeal and make the final decision, taking into account the planning inspector's recommendations following the enquiry.

Looking to the long term a BRS that was prevented from expanding beyond its current planning cap of 10 mppa might well be CWL’s best bet for a growing future. I remember saying nearly ten years ago on one of the old Welsh aviation forums (WAF or WAN, I forget which one) that it might be in CWL's interest for BRS to reach 10 mppa as quickly as possible, then see further growth stopped by the planners.

 

[Jerry]

Whether Wizz or someone else (probably more than one someone else) the airport is clearly in need of a substantial boost in its passenger numbers, and I’m speaking of the time when the industry is overcoming the worst of the virus effects - currently all airports are down massively on their pre-virus plans.

Wizz do have a pretty large operation at DSA so are established there, they'd be pretty well an unknown, if they were like minded to help an airline to base then Ryanair would be a better option i'd have thought. But it all depends on what there overall strategy is, is it to just get high passenger numbers or connectivity for business and inbound tourism?

The WG departmental letter described BRS as the UK’s third largest airport outside London and the letter from the organisation representing CWL said it was the fifth largest.

They could've been using passenger figures from when Glasgow was busier than Bristol?

3. CWL has spare capacity and can handle additional passenger traffic instead of expanding BRS.

This is the problem for CWL in that it has the potential to take much of the additional flow especially on many of the major holiday routes to Spain and Turkey but it needs the airlines to add those flights to CWL instead of BRS. A good example is Ryanair adding non based PMI flights to Cardiff instead of Bristol like they planned for this year (i think Lauda were going to operate them) or Ryanair adding a based aircraft to Cardiff instead of Bristol but in the end it has to be worth it for the airline itself profit wise and maybe that is CWLs overall problem and why it's failed to attract a LCC, it's not profitable enough. Maybe WG need to look into how they can change that.

 

[Jerry]

This is what at the moment winter is looking like for Cardiff Airport. Obviously this is subject to change.
TUI
Alicante 1 weekly Saturday
Lanzarote 2 weekly Sunday and Thursday (Thursday only in November and until 20th December)
Tenerife 2 weekly Tuesday and Friday
Vueling
Alicnate 3 weekly Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday
Malaga 2 weekly Tuesday and Saturday
Ryanair
Malta 1 weekly Sunday (except for Wednesday flights on 28/10, 23/12, 30/12 and 6/1.)
Eastern Airways
Anglesey 10 weekly Monday to Friday (except for Xmas and New year period)
KLM
Amsterdam 20 weekly (6 E190 and 14 E175)
Qatar Airways
Doha 5 weekly Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

A total of 46 weekly flights altogether.

 

[geoff]

Having read the somewhat heated discussion on dried plum regarding CWL, I find some of the comments passed on the CWL management some what harsh. Spencer Birns and his team prior to Covid 19, managed to raise passenger figures by 50%. There were calls for a new team to be in charge at CWL, and two of the three permanent head figures are new. The airport management team at the present time, consists of the CEO{interim}, chairman{new}, and financial director{new}, Deb Bowen-Rees is staying on until October to assist the new appointments. These people are running three businesses within Cardiff Airport Ltd, I don't think that is top heavy management in these trying times. I am sure the airport management are trying their very best to replace lost routes, only time will tell if they succeed.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

They could've been using passenger figures from when Glasgow was busier than Bristol?

October 2019 was when BRS overtook GLA and by the end of the year was 117,000 ahead and the gap widened in the first two months of this year to 187,000. The letter from the consultancy firm to North Somerset Council was dated 28 January 2020 and sent by email so they would have been aware of the change in the pecking order in late January, if not the widening gap.

I accept it's a relatively minor point but I would expect a consultancy firm to have experts in aviation and such a thing is easily checkable. The same letter contained the reference to Plymouth Airport (closed in 2011) as one of the alternatives to an expanding BRS. When simple factual errors like that occur some people will wonder if other argued points are incorrect too.

This is the problem for CWL in that it has the potential to take much of the additional flow especially on many of the major holiday routes to Spain and Turkey but it needs the airlines to add those flights to CWL instead of BRS. A good example is Ryanair adding non based PMI flights to Cardiff instead of Bristol like they planned for this year (i think Lauda were going to operate them) or Ryanair adding a based aircraft to Cardiff instead of Bristol but in the end it has to be worth it for the airline itself profit wise and maybe that is CWLs overall problem and why it's failed to attract a LCC, it's not profitable enough. Maybe WG need to look into how they can change that.

It's been CWL's problem for many years, and was an emerging trend several years before Go (later bought by easyJet) set up a BRS base in 2001.

Sun routes in peak summer have never been a problem for CWL in terms of filling seats, hence the Ryanair move that you mention. It's other routes and routes away from peak season where the catchment tends to be less robust.

Ryanair operate 15 routes at BRS in competition with easyJet (16 if the two 'Milans' are counted), some seasonal and they are not all sun routes. The latest is Vienna that should have begun at the beginning of this summer season but has only recently commenced - originally to be a Lauda route but now with Ryanair flight numbers albeit Lauda will operate for the rest of the summer then share with Ryanair this coming winter.

It's only 2 x weekly against easyJet's up to 3 x weekly, so it might reasonably be asked why Ryanair did not give it to CWL instead, with the same applying to the likes of Seville, Krakow and Venice, all year-round competed routes too.

The lack of a base would not be an impediment. BRS has a 4-aircraft Ryanair base but many of their flights have been operated down the years from bases at the 'other end' of the routes in question and that remains the case right now.

It can only be assumed that Ryanair believes it is better off serving these routes from BRS against easyJet competition than from CWL where there would be no competition. If BRS has given Ryanair a deal the airport can afford to as it is very profitable (ignoring the virus effects) and needs as much footfall as possible to feed its non-aeronautical revenue streams.

That is the perennial CWL conundrum which is why I have believed for many years that CWL's best bet by far is a BRS grounded at its current 10 mppa planning cap.

Having read the somewhat heated discussion on dried plum regarding CWL, I find some of the comments passed on the CWL management some what harsh. Spencer Birns and his team prior to Covid 19, managed to raise passenger figures by 50%. There were calls for a new team to be in charge at CWL, and two of the three permanent head figures are new. The airport management team at the present time, consists of the CEO{interim}, chairman{new}, and financial director{new}, Deb Bowen-Rees is staying on until October to assist the new appointments. These people are running three businesses within Cardiff Airport Ltd, I don't think that is top heavy management in these trying times. I am sure the airport management are trying their very best to replace lost routes, only time will tell if they succeed.

There seems to be a call on the Dried Plum for a more experienced and active senior management team. Some of the proponents have criticised the salary of the new finance director, yet if they believe a new senior team is necessary and one that will meet their aspirations the airport company would have to shell out a lot more money than that for the FD.

Some of this reminds me of the football syndrome where airport 'supporters' view their airport as football fans view their football club who think that a new manager is always the salvation for a struggling club. Like you I doubt that any management could do any better than the current team. Aviation is in turmoil anyway at the moment and no airport is immune.

 

[Jerry]

Some of this reminds me of the football syndrome where airport 'supporters' view their airport as football fans view their football club who think that a new manager is always the salvation for a struggling club. Like you I doubt that any management could do any better than the current team. Aviation is in turmoil anyway at the moment and no airport is immune.

Which can be amplified by 'big' club syndrome which I feel many who look at CWL have. In conversations it's often mentioned that Cardiff used to have more passengers than Bristol and that it used to have transatlantic routes and a lot of people expect Cardiff to be a much bigger airport and to be doing much better than it is. Probably been guilty of that in the past myself!
Unfortunately CWL as an airport does seem to have a very high expectation put on it.

 

[Foxlimayankee]

CWL will never have a route network close to what BRS has. The fact of the matter is that holiday destination demand is huge in comparison to city break demand. Hence the reason holiday routes work from EXT, BRS and CWL in huge volumes (if you take passenger numbers prior to TCX going bust)
Airlines always look at the whole Southwest and South Wales region as one catchment, which includes Exeter. BRS is the central point of all 3, hence its ability to attract the numbers that make routes viable. It also has the power and brand awareness of Easyjet and Ryanair but with Easyjet always being the leader in volume and route network.
Any route that Easyjet offer from Bristol on a fairly high frequency, Ryanair will likely want part of. But that will likely be at Bristol first before any further frequencies elsewhere, for example FAO and AGP, along with being sole operator to MLA and having access to the data as to where their passengers are originating. Only then are they really competing with Easyjet and spreading out to more suitably supply to the catchment area.

There's very little that can be done to match Easyjet, and it would take an Airline with some serious balls and backing to break that up. Vueling had the opportunity, Ryanair have more recently and there's potential for Wizz as they look to expand around the UK.

I am a firm believer, even prior to TCX, BE and Covid19 that CWL needs to concentrate on its current route network and the routes it knows can work. That is the sun routes. I don't believe the Airport was in the right place at the time to be offering a number of the European City routes that it had Flybe flying.
Quiet routes with continuous chopping and changing doesn't instil confidence in passengers, and flybe had been pretty inconsistent with their operation at CWL over the past decade.
Vueling on the other hand have offered competitive prices as well as consistency and reliability, with only small changes to their frequency offering over the most recent years. They have built up consumer confidence and have become known in South Wales. Personally I believe they haven't reached their full potential in South Wales on their current route offerings, mainly because of their own internal business changes. Their routes (excluding BCN) should have been daily by now in peak summer.

So my thoughts on where CWL should have been by now (not taking into account Covid19 and Flybe)
A consistent and reliable domestic network to what Flybe offered.
Flybe flights to Ibiza & Menorca as well as the Italian routes. The sun routes should have made them money like Faro did. Drop the German routes with a view to reinstate them down the line.
Ryanair growing on their current route network with view of at least a 1 aircraft base in order to offer Canaries and maybe one or two Greek routes.

There also should have been a huge generic advertising campaign to encourage people to think about looking at CWL before automatically referring to Easyjet and Ryanair, and even TUI to a point, at BRS first. CWL can be competitive as has been discussed many times on forums and social media, but misses out because people always head to check Bristol first.

This way I believe it would encourage consumer confidence in CWL and would encourage confidence in the Airlines that money can be made at CWL. Once those core routes make money, then Airlines can look to expand in to other routes such as city routrs and take the risks, knowing that people do think about CWL when they start planning.

When CWL was 2m+ it was mainly on the holiday routes and long haul, there wasn't a huge offering of city routes that have been tried over the past few years.

 

[Jerry]

Drop the German routes with a view to reinstate them down the line.

I suspect that the German routes were put in place to encourage inbound tourism and business, tourism wise 8% of internatonal visitors to Wales in 2016-18 were from Germany and Wales does about £1.6 billion a year in trade with Germany.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Which can be amplified by 'big' club syndrome which I feel many who look at CWL have. In conversations it's often mentioned that Cardiff used to have more passengers than Bristol and that it used to have transatlantic routes and a lot of people expect Cardiff to be a much bigger airport and to be doing much better than it is. Probably been guilty of that in the past myself!
Unfortunately CWL as an airport does seem to have a very high expectation put on it.

Until the mid 1980s CWL was generally busier than BRS in terms of passenger numbers, although not by a huge amount and not every year. Passengers numbers weren’t large at either airport for many years.

CAA stats show that between 1961 and 1986 CWL carried more annual passengers on 19 occasions and BRS on six. 1968 was a ‘tie’ with 130,000 each.

For much of that time BRS was a failing airport and a drain on the purse of the city rate payers who owned it. From time to time there were calls for it to be closed from a number of local bodies and prominent individuals. Had it not been for a man called Les Wilson (tragically killed in a road accident in 1995), who arrived in from Luton Airport in 1980 to become managing director and masterminded a remarkable turnaround in BRS’s fortunes over the next decade, closure might well have occurred.

If the city council had acquiesced to the closure demands who knows what sort of airport CWL would be these days with no competition from across the Severn estuary?

In fact, it wasn’t until 1971 that either airport handled 200,000 passengers in a year and 300,000 wasn’t achieved until 1982.

The last time CWL saw more passengers in a calendar year than BRS was in 1986: 487,000/469,000.

Until the ‘noughties’ BRS had very little long-haul provision. Thomson/TUI had tried Florida and the Caribbean in some summer seasons; there was also a short-lived service to Goa via Gatwick and several points east, and various airlines attempted Toronto but it seemed that BRS possessed the evil eye because at least three of these airlines went out of business whilst operating from there to Canada.

When TUI and First Choice came together in the ‘noughties’ BRS’s summer transatlantic charters looked up (First Choice had begun an improved transatlantic summer charter programme a couple of years previously) and began to eclipse that at CWL. The big coup was the Continental service to Newark that lasted five and half years from May 2005.

Until then CWL had enjoyed the lion’s share of long-haul flights whether regular charters to Florida or the Caribbean, or scheduled flights to Canada with the likes of Air Transat and Zoom.

There was a time - probably in the late 70s or early 80s - when the government of the day proposed a pecking order for UK airports. They were listed as International Gateway, Regional, Local. CWL was to be the regional airport for South Wales and the West Country with BRS designated a local airport for its immediate hinterland.

So there is some foundation to the view that CWL was the ‘bigger’ airport although it would have been 35-40 years ago and it was not significantly bigger in terms of passenger traffic in those years when it was ahead of BRS. I think some people believe CWL should have far more of a presence because of the capital city status.

Airlines always look at the whole Southwest and South Wales region as one catchment, which includes Exeter. BRS is the central point of all 3, hence its ability to attract the numbers that make routes viable. It also has the power and brand awareness of Easyjet and Ryanair but with Easyjet always being the leader in volume and route network.
Any route that Easyjet offer from Bristol on a fairly high frequency, Ryanair will likely want part of. But that will likely be at Bristol first before any further frequencies elsewhere, for example FAO and AGP, along with being sole operator to MLA and having access to the data as to where their passengers are originating. Only then are they really competing with Easyjet and spreading out to more suitably supply to the catchment area.

There's very little that can be done to match Easyjet, and it would take an Airline with some serious balls and backing to break that up. Vueling had the opportunity, Ryanair have more recently and there's potential for Wizz as they look to expand around the UK.

BRS's position between CWL and EXT is undoubtedly an advantage but its substantially larger core catchment which is also generally more prosperous than CWL's also plays a part.

Until the coronavirus threw aviation into chaos easyJet was handling over five million passengers a year at BRS. Had it been at CWL instead of BRS would it have reached that total? CWL would not pick up many of the one and a half million Devon and Cornwall residents/visitors who use BRS each year for starters, and would probably need more West Country travellers than the number of South Wales passengers who use BRS. Making a 'what if?' study of an easyJet-led CWL (where it could be assumed that easyJet had eschewed BRS and other airlines were showing a serious and meaningful interest in CWL) would be a fascinating exercise.

 

[Foxlimayankee]

BRS's position between CWL and EXT is undoubtedly an advantage but its substantially larger core catchment which is also generally more prosperous than CWL's also plays a part.

Until the coronavirus threw aviation into chaos easyJet was handling over five million passengers a year at BRS. Had it been at CWL instead of BRS would it have reached that total? CWL would not pick up many of the one and a half million Devon and Cornwall residents/visitors who use BRS each year for starters, and would probably need more West Country travellers than the number of South Wales passengers who use BRS. Making a 'what if?' study of an easyJet-led CWL (where it could be assumed that easyJet had eschewed BRS and other airlines were showing a serious and meaningful interest in CWL) would be a fascinating exercise.

I'm not suggesting for one minute that Easyjet would have been as big at CWL if they had chosen there. If anything they would've upped sticks and moved to BRS anyway, or operated CWL as a mini base complimenting a much bigger base at BRS. Something we're all hoping FR will do.
My point being that the far Southwest and South Wales catchments effectively 'top up' the catchment to make BRS so successful and make those smaller demand city routes more viable. They would still work without those catchments however the growth Easyjet has seen to is it 17 aircraft now(?) might not have been possible if CWL and EXT had become more successful but smaller regional airports and retained their passengers.

If i remember rightly there's about 2m Welsh using BRS. What I would be interested in seeing is how many of those use routes from BRS that are offered, or have the potential to be offered from CWL. Again, I dont believe many city routes would be viable from CWL, some of the main ones would, but more the holiday routes. Unfortunately no Airline is willing to take the risk, especially now.

I would also like to see how the shift of city moving is having an effect on the Welsh economy. We know that once the tolls went that many people started to leave the expensive BRS property markets and move to Southeast Wales, still obviously central to both CWL and BRS, but it must've shifted things slightly to bring CWL as a viable option for many.
It's also been suggested that since Covid19 many people that live in London or surrounding areas are becoming more used to the idea of working from home, or giving up the rat race completely and relocating out of Southeast England and branching out West and North. This could have an advantageous effect on both the Southwest and South Wales. Only time will tell with the latter.
I have a feeling that the working from home setup will remain for some time. With a day or two commuting to London rather than every day making moving further out more attractive.
The WG should be latching on to that and promoting Wales as a cheap place to live but easily accessible to the bigger cities. Someone on London wages living in South Wales would be laughing.