Helvetic Airways

[TheLocalYokel]

Helvetic return to CWL?

Commenting on the confirmed withdrawal of Helvetic on the CWL-ZRH route for summer 2013 recently (it's been obvious the route was axed for some time - it hasn't operated this winter), Helvetic’s chief financial officer Tobias Pogorevc said the airline was not “commercially happy” with the Cardiff-Zurich service over the past two years.

He said Bristol had significantly more business passengers than Cardiff, plus more passengers flying outbound from Bristol.

The good thing for CWL and South Wales is that Tobias Pogorevc went on to say, “We are in ongoing discussion with the marketing/business development team of Cardiff Airport as we would like to return to Cardiff. The Swiss tourists liked Wales and would welcome a direct route from Zurich to Cardiff."

So there is still hope for a return in 2014.

 

[Em0866]

What bothers me about this is that the Welsh Government spent half a million quid on marketing in Switzerland on this and it ended up with them pulling the route anyway. I think it is the wrong destination for CWL, especially for those who live in the catchment area of CWL. The fact that they now fly the route from BRS, those Swiss who want to cross the border will do so from there. It's just my gut feeling this route does not suit CWL at the moment.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

What bothers me about this is that the Welsh Government spent half a million quid on marketing in Switzerland on this and it ended up with them pulling the route anyway. I think it is the wrong destination for CWL, especially for those who live in the catchment area of CWL. The fact that they now fly the route from BRS, those Swiss who want to cross the border will do so from there. It's just my gut feeling this route does not suit CWL at the moment.

The business sector on the route seems to be a problem, but that's been replicated on a number of routes in the past.

Wales is making a great effort to get inbound tourists and this summer Lufthansa will start a weekly service to CWL from Dusseldorf aimed primarily at German tourists and tour company Prima Reisen is to operate a limited season of flights from Austria to CWL for Austrian tourists. There is also a major campaign ongoing to promote Wales in Catalonia linked with the Vueling services.

So it may be possible to get sufficient Swiss tourists to make some sort of service viable - perhaps extending some of the flights from BRS to CWL each week. That assumes Helvetic will continue to BRS in 2014 of course and that it's not too complicated operationally to operate only some flights each week on two sectors instead of one.

 

[Seasider]

If they are looking to the tourist traffic, why not operate a weekly flight direct, similar to the IT traffic.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

If they are looking to the tourist traffic, why not operate a weekly flight direct, similar to the IT traffic.

Within a few months of Helvetic starting its CWL service to/from Zurich the airline stated that most travellers were Swiss-originating which is great for the Wales tourist industry. The trouble was though that the loads were still very low for the most part.

The airline then introduced a Bristol stop in each direction and consistently the passenger mix was two thirds of the overall load on the BRS leg and one third on the CWL leg.

At the end of summer 2012 the CWL leg was dropped and the service now operates between Bristol and Zurich. It has to be said that the loads on that are not fantastic but they do seem to be improving consistently.

The evidence so far suggests that even though the CWL leg was predominantly Swiss -originating there weren't enough to make it viable, despite the Wales Government spending a lot of money promoting the country in Switzerland.

Whether further measures can be taken to improve the situation may be questionable but it appears that talks continue between the airline and the Wales Government so your suggestion could well be a possibility being considered.