TheLocalYokel
Honorary Member Of Forums4airports
- Jan 14, 2009
- 16,521
- 343
- IMPORTANT!! To reduce spam, we request that you make a post soon after completing your registration. We request you keep your account active by posting regularly. Inactive accounts risk being deleted.
- Yes
- Admin
- #2,041
I watched the Senedd plenary session where CWL was discussed.
The consensus across all political parties seemed to be:
1. They support the growth of the airport, albeit through different ways, i.e. the Conservatives want it privatised.
2. It is a vital facility for the nation, although there was some concern by the Conservatives as to how the debt could be repaid, and some AMs seemed think that having an airport is as much a status symbol for the country as it is for what it provides.
3. Continuing denial of APD devolution cannot be justified when all other nations of the UK have the power. I didn’t know that. I thought that Northern Ireland only had it for long haul, not that it’s done them any good, and that England was subject to Westminster where MPs from all the UK countries have a say.
Other points that I noted include:
The minister (Mr Skates) emphasised that if the WG had not purchased the airport in 2013 it would have closed. The previous FM said much the same in the past but it’s difficult to know whether that is the truth or a justification for the WG under Labour for purchasing the airport.
He also said they have stress-tested the financial strength of CWL against the collapse of Flybe. In 2018 the collapse of Flybe would have had devastating consequences on the airport but because of diversification since then that is not the case today. Anybody with the slightest interest in the subject knows that the reason for Flybe’s presence being lower at the time of collapse than in 2018 was nothing to do with diversification. It was simply a restructuring of the airline following the new owners’ takeover leaving CWL with fewer routes and flights than hitherto was the case, ergo Flybe’s percentage was a lower percentage of the whole.
Another AM who had been on the airport committee when CWL was in local authority hands blamed the decision to move CWL into the private sector in 1995 for allowing BRS to flourish to the detriment of CWL. The fact that CWL’s best ever year - 2007 when it handled 2.1 mppa - saw the airport still under private sector ownership was ignored by everyone, including the Conservative AMs.
Perhaps the most bizarre comment of the entire plenary session was one AM’s assertion, when saying that CWL was better placed to survive the current coronavirus scare than many airports, that a major advantage is the airport’s ‘fantastically long runway’, longer than that at BRS or BHX. Why let facts get in the way when you want to make a point unsupported by them? At the last count BHX’s runway was over 600 metres longer than CWL’s whose own runway is not ‘fantastically long’ at all; it’s longer than BRS’s ski jump but certainly not a long one in the overall list of UK airport runways.
Nothing was said by anyone to disabuse the AM of this notion. She also mentioned BAMC as underpinning CWL. She might have mentioned, and this is not intended to be cynical, that because CWL has fewer routes and flights and handles fewer passengers than many airports, that might be a good reason for it being affected less than some other airports.
It was particularly amusing because in his summing up the minister warned against ‘using carefully selected statistics’ designed to ‘skewer’ the future of the airport. It seems it's all right to use them when arguing the other way.
The minister reiterated the current administration’s policy of retaining the airport in public control although they are still not against private sector involvement in a minority stake.
Although I'm not the biggest fan of politicians (of any party) I was impressed by the collective will at the plenary session to get behind the airport, even though there were different views across the parties as to how it should be achieved.
