The person in question on "pploon" is but one of a long list of so-called “experts”. If only 1% of these goons actually worked in the industry, or even at Cardiff Airport, perhaps both would be the better for it. Then again, perhaps not.
This particular end of a bell has plentry form. Only recently he judged the Welsh Government subsidy “completely wrong” and "shouldn't be allowed as it has distorted the industry", despite a panel of subject matter experts at the Competition Appeal Tribunal finding otherwise and hearing legal presentation in support and against – twice.
He's also one of many industry analysts who claim Vueling "is the latest airline abandoning the airport entirely" despite absolutely nobody knowing for sure what their future plans are (perhaps not even Vueling!) and that "the passengers aren't there", completely ignoring 14 years of successfully carrying thousands of passengers to and from Cardiff and more recently offering perhaps their greatest presence on the Alicante and Malaga routes over the last summer season. Also conveniently ignored was IAG's confirmation that route growth was being abandoned for the next year in order to focus on routes with greatest volume demand due to the increasing costs caused by the situaiton in the Middle East, resulting in schedule adjustments and (in some cases) cuts at other UK airports.
Who needs "objectivity", "facts" and "context" when you are so c*ck-sure anyway? Objectivity, facts and context are the preserve of Cardiff Airport apologists after all
Unfortunately, it doesn't end there.
Captain Hindsight also claims that “everyone knows (sic) Qatar was never going to be long term” and that “WestJet will fulfil their obligations to collect the taxpayer subsidies, and drop the route the moment the subsidy ends and they can't sell enough tickets at a high enough price. The aircraft can make more money elsewhere” despite both Cardiff Airport and the Welsh Government confirming on record that no subsidies, public funding or taxpayer money has been used to support the service and having no clue whatsoever how much money WestJet aircraft are making on this route or any other. His in-depth knowledge of the North American outbound tourism industry just adds to his apparent expertise of absolutely everything.
With that level of hubris, not to mention self-assured “gob-shiteness” on public display, the next pile of horse droppings proved without doubt that opinions are indeed like arseholes. Everyone has them, but its often best not to air them in public in case they make you look silly.
Nevertheless, lets look at Captain Hindsight’s assessment of the world:
"1. Had the public spat with Ryanair which led to them pulling out and going all-in on Bristol for over a decade"
- Is there any airport or authority that hasn’t had a public spat with Ryanair and not learned the hard way that they need Ryanair more than Ryanair needs them?
"2. Failed to secure Go"
- It was a beauty contest between two airports. Granted TBI should have known better owning the birthplace of easyJet, but the low-cost industry was in its infancy and TBI were either naïve, complacent, or more likely both. There were multiple new players entering the market at the time and nobody knew where Go would go. Sadly, the rest, is history.
"3. Failed to secure easyJet"
- Major Goonery didn’t even think of at least Google-ing this one. Go launched at Bristol April 2001, easyJet May 2001. By then both were already in early talks for one to acquire the other before easyJet’ formally announced its acquisition of Go in April 2002. Cardiff may have been in consideration at the time, again as a sibling airport to its birthplace, but easyJet already had one eye on the future. Hard to see any other outcome in another beauty contest where Cardiff was already at a disadvantage this time around. As easyJet got bigger and competitors came and went elsewhere, they were never going to come to Cardiff just to serve a sub-part of the same market.
"4. Put all its eggs in the BMI Baby basket when it was never really a major competitor to the other LCCs"
- It gets worse. BMI Baby were a major competitor in the low-cost market until the credit crunch accelerated its demise. As for “eggs in a basket”, were we dreaming at the time or did KLM, Thomsonfly, XL, Thomas Cook, Air Wales, BA Citiexpress, Zoom, Air Southwest and Flybe (before they left and returned) never fly from Cardiff Airport while BMI Baby were in residence?
"5. Invested massively in the Fly-be jet base thing a decade ago and lost out"
- Lost out how? The Flybe story of success and subsequent failure is well documented. The airline was a major player in the industry but as costs increased its business model and reliance on investment from airports such as Cardiff, Southampton, Exeter, Belfast City and Jersey just wasn’t enough. After the initial deals and incentives came to an end and the opertation started to mature, the later stage investment was never enough. Yes it proved to be a costly "mistake" in hindsight but the base served Cardiff Airport and its passengers very well at the time. Nobody knew that the world economy was about to hit the skids in more ways that one which ultimately laid bare the shaky foundations quite a few airlines were indeed built on, Flybe included. Fast forward half a decade and even airlines as successful as easyJet and IAG are feeling the effects of a never improving economy.
"6. Failed to secure Jet2"
- Another beauty contest. Yes it was a blow but money talks. Bristol won. sh*t happens. Bigger airports have more leverage than ever. Such is life sadly.
Granted our take above stems from our own particular levels of hubris and armchair expertise, albeit (we hope) in the company of more informed individuals here. Yet, to present a half-baked, almost fact-free and ignorant assessment of “failings”, most of which having occurred over 20 years ago under private ownership, smacks of a weird and desperate need to throw another shitty stick at anything to do with Cardiff Airport. Its an assessment as unhinged as it is sad.
Some people shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a keyboard.
We can only hope Wales Online or Valley Times don’t see it. They’ll no doubt print it unedited as an opinion piece from an industry expert.
This is exactly why I regard the airport as a failure. There is far too much complacency surrounding its performance and far too little willingness to critically evaluate the decisions that got it here. Rather than acknowledging obvious strategic failures, people continually find reasons to excuse them. In fact, much of your own response makes my argument for me.
1. Is there any airport or authority that hasn’t had a public spat with Ryanair and not learned the hard way that they need Ryanair more than Ryanair needs them?
Yes, airports such as Stansted and Bristol have gone to considerable lengths to accommodate Ryanair and other low-cost carriers. That is precisely the point. Competent airport management recognises the commercial importance of airlines capable of delivering millions of passengers and is prepared to compete aggressively to secure them. Pointing out that managers at other airports have also made poor decisions does not somehow turn Cardiff Airport's decisions into good ones.
2. It was a beauty contest between two airports. Granted TBI should have known better owning the birthplace of easyJet, but the low-cost industry was in its infancy and TBI were either naïve, complacent, or more likely both. There were multiple new players entering the market at the time and nobody knew where Go would go. Sadly, the rest, is history.
You admit yourself that TBI was "either naïve, complacent, or more likely both". Thank you, that is essentially an admission of poor management. Sensible management with a coherent long-term strategy should have recognised what was happening to European aviation in the late 1990s and early 2000s and worked aggressively to secure at least one of the two rapidly expanding LCCs.
"3. Major Goonery didn’t even think of at least Google-ing this one. Go launched at Bristol April 2001, easyJet May 2001.
Cardiff airport should have secured the launch of at least one of them. This much was obvious at the time and with hindsight. My point is perfectly valid to say the airport failed in securing either of them.
It gets worse. BMI Baby were a major competitor in the low-cost market until the credit crunch accelerated its demise. As for “eggs in a basket”, were we dreaming at the time or did KLM, Thomsonfly, XL, Thomas Cook, Air Wales, BA Citiexpress, Zoom, Air Southwest and Flybe (before they left and returned) never fly from Cardiff Airport while BMI Baby were in residence?
In what meaningful sense was Bmibaby a 'major' competitor? Ryanair had x10 more passengers in 2006, easyJet had 8x more.
The comparison is more striking at airport level. Bmibaby had a smaller footprint at Cardiff than TUI currently does, and TUI doesn't exactly have an enormous footprint at the airport. easyJet alone had 3x more aircraft based at Bristol in 2006 than BMIbaby did at Cardiff in 2006. The idea that Bmibaby was some major competitor that went wrong is off the mark. Bmibaby was something the airport shouldn't have spend so much time focussing on.
That is the fundamental problem with the bmibaby defence. bmibaby was useful to Cardiff and contributed significant traffic, but management concentrated on a much smaller airline while the two carriers that would come to dominate European low-cost aviation were expanding elsewhere. Indeed, TBI's own results acknowledged in 2004 that Cardiff passenger numbers had fallen partly because bmibaby reduced capacity. That should itself have demonstrated the danger of becoming overly dependent on a relatively small operator.
The other airlines you mention do not really alter that argument. In most cases, they either developed larger operations at Bristol, disappeared through bankruptcy or restructuring, or were comparatively minor operators such as Zoom and Air Wales. None became a substitute for securing a large, durable low-cost base from an airline with the scale of easyJet or Ryanair.
5. Lost out how?
Welsh Government loans money to Cardiff Airport and Cardiff Airport uses route-development money to support Flybe. Flybe's own accounts describe arrangements with Cardiff and several other airports as “airport partnership agreements.” Its 2017/18 accounts said these agreements generated £19.6m of revenue across Flybe's network. Cardiff Airport was absorbing part of the losses/risk of operating routes. Cardiff Airport accepted financial exposure in return for Flybe basing aircraft there.
This isn't even an exaggeration. Audit Wales, a government office, warned that there's a massive degree of financial risk for CIAL in the event that sales fall below the projected level. Guess what? The Welsh Government and Cardiff Airport ignored their warnings.
I can see why it happened, Flybe had something Cardiff desperately needed: aircraft Cardiff could get based immediately, and Flybe had the opposite problem. Flybe had bought/leased too many Embraer E195s and was desperately trying to find flights for them under its internal “Project Blackbird.” When the Cardiff Airport deal was announced, Flybe openly said the two Cardiff aircraft were part of its attempt to find homes for its surplus E195 fleet.
It was even challenged in the Welsh Assembly at the time. Flybe's accounts effectively showed aircraft being “chartered” to Cardiff Airport and then-AMs demanded to know whether the money could be recovered or transferred to another airline if Flybe ceased trading. It was a big political issue.
The deal was meant to last 10 years but lasted 4. Before Flybe even collapsed they had pulled the aircraft. To give an idea how it was a failure, the Welsh Government said Flybe represented about 24% of the airport's passengers yet only 5.6% of its revenue.
Doesn't sound a particularly good deal to me. The airport was stupid to ever agree to it.
So no, I don't regard the Flybe arrangement as some great strategic success. I understand why management did it, but understanding a decision is not the same as believing it was a good one. Cardiff effectively entered a long-term arrangement partly to solve Flybe's surplus-aircraft problem, assumed commercial risk in doing so, and lost the core based-jet operation after roughly four years of a ten-year agreement. That is, at minimum, a strategy that deserves serious criticism rather than retrospective applause.
"6. Another beauty contest. Yes it was a blow but money talks. Bristol won. sh*t happens. Bigger airports have more leverage than ever. Such is life sadly.
Exactly. Money does talk. The Welsh Government's own figures showed £181m invested in Cardiff Airport since acquisition by March 2025, comprising acquisition/equity investment, loans and grants. A further £20m was then provided in April 2025 as the first tranche of the new support package. So cumulative Welsh Government financial support and investment has now passed roughly £200m, although it is important to be accurate and acknowledge that this includes loans, equity and acquisition costs rather than £200m of simple cash subsidy.
On top of that, the Welsh Government has approved a further subsidy package worth up to £205.2m over ten years, including up to £100m specifically for commercial passenger air-route development. Against that level of public support, I think taxpayers are entitled to ask for substantially better results.
This willingness to write off failures like securing Jet2 is part of the reason the airport is failing. You need to demand better and set your standards higher. The appropriate response should not be "well, these things happen". It should be: why did it happen, what did competing airports do better, and what is management going to do differently?
Let's look at where the airport is:
Cardiff Airport passengers are down 42% compared to pre-pandemic levels. It's only beaten in this unwanted category by Southampton, Southend and Exeter. Yet, of these four, which has received £200m in government subsidies? It's in the top four worst recoveries yet is the only one to receive hundreds of millions in free money. It's an unsustainable vanity project!
At some point, "strategic national asset" cannot remain a magic phrase that ends the discussion. If Cardiff Airport requires hundreds of millions of pounds of public investment, debt write-offs and subsidy while continuing to produce one of the weakest post-pandemic passenger recoveries in the country, then demanding better performance is not negativity. It is basic accountability.
"Beauty contest"
You keep saying beauty contest in your response. That perfectly sums up why the Welsh Government continue to pour money into a failing airport than vital public services.
Who cares that the Welsh education system is falling further behind every nation in the UK when you can fly to Toronto?
Who cares that Wales' biggest hospital is falling apart and leaving patients on trolleys in corridors when Cardiff Airport has a new jet bridge?
Hey, I have an idea. We can reduce the backlog in patients awaiting CT scans by sending them to Cardiff Airport. It's not like the CT scanners the Welsh Government pissed £6.6m of our money up the wall on are being used.
