Can I just draw a line under one aspect of this discussion first: the name calling and personal insults stop here. There are clearly strongly held views on both sides, but there is absolutely no reason why they cannot be debated without name calling, telling people to leave Wales or making it personal in either direction.
I also don’t think supporting Cardiff Airport means having to support every decision that has ever been made regarding it, or agreeing that the current strategy is necessarily the best one. Equally, it isn’t fair to blame the present management for decisions made by previous owners or management teams twenty years ago. Historic decisions are relevant where there are lessons to learn from them, but that should be the basis of the discussion.
Looking at this as a non-Welsh observer, I think the argument over what sort of routes Cardiff should be pursuing is actually quite an interesting one, and there is probably a bit of chicken and egg involved.
I completely understand the argument for routes such as Qatar previously and WestJet to Toronto now. A direct North American route gives Wales visibility, inbound tourism opportunities and business connectivity, while a hub route such as Doha offered connections far beyond Doha itself. Those benefits aren’t necessarily captured simply by counting passengers through the terminal.
But there is another perfectly legitimate way of looking at it; WestJet is 4x weekly to YYZ with a 174-seat B38M. That’s a useful and potentially strategically important route, but in terms of sheer passenger volume it is relatively small. If similar effort or commercial support could persuade Ryanair to base an aircraft at Cardiff, add several routes and increase frequencies, that could potentially put far more passengers through the airport each year.
Yes, many of those passengers would be Welsh residents travelling outbound rather than tourists arriving in Wales. But that doesn’t make them economically irrelevant. Many are currently driving across the border and spending their airport money at BRS. Bringing some of that traffic back through Cardiff means more parking, retail, food and beverage and aeronautical revenue, while a larger underlying passenger base should also make the airport more commercially sustainable and attractive to other airlines.
Of course there is a counterargument: Ryanair would expect very competitive terms, higher passenger numbers don’t automatically mean a better financial return, and outbound leisure traffic does not bring the same wider economic benefits as inbound tourism or business travel. So I don’t think this is as simple as “Ryanair good, long haul bad” or vice versa.
Perhaps the strongest strategy is a mixture: use low-cost carriers to build volume and the local passenger base, while selectively pursuing routes which offer something strategically different — major hubs, inbound tourism markets and important business links — alongside cargo, MRO and the other activities Cardiff is developing.
What I don’t think helps is treating any questioning of the strategy as being anti-Cardiff Airport. You can want the airport to succeed while still asking whether public money could sometimes produce a greater return if spent differently. Equally, critics should acknowledge when something is working and recognise that not every historic mistake can be laid at the door of today’s management.
That seems a much more worthwhile discussion than deciding who is or isn’t sufficiently supportive of Cardiff Airport.
