Cardiff: Route Development & Rumours

[Jerry]

Guernsey

A post on another forum suggests that Blue Islands has applied for a route licence to operate GCI-CWL. Presumably this would be a Flybe franchise as with its BRS-JER. CWL hasn't had a GCI route since 2001 when the BA franchisee (British Regional Airlines) operated a 4 x weekly service.

In 2013 Blue Islands applied to operate a 2 x daily GCI-BRS service in competition with Aurigny but the Guernsey licensing authority rejected the application which was then withdrawn. 3 x daily across two airlines was probably thought excessive for the route.

A GCI-CWL application would be likely to succeed as the route is currently unserved.

I'm unable to confirm the post on the other forum at the moment and I won't begin a separate Blue Islands thread until or unless the route is officially confirmed.

Interesting development given that only today in the Blue Islands BRS thread I've been questioning the viability of the airline.

I've just seen that in the same forum! Lol. Would be interesting. One poster suggested them doing Jersey as well specifically as a double dropper. CWL-JER-GCI-CWL. Guessing this would be under the Flybe banner also it would have the advantage of freeing up an E190 once a week and a fly in Q400 once a week. Whether they would use an ATR 42 or 72 would be a guess but Guernsey would be a welcome edition.

 

[Jerry]

Guernsey

A post on another forum suggests that Blue Islands has applied for a route licence to operate GCI-CWL. Presumably this would be a Flybe franchise as with its BRS-JER. CWL hasn't had a GCI route since 2001 when the BA franchisee (British Regional Airlines) operated a 4 x weekly service.

In 2013 Blue Islands applied to operate a 2 x daily GCI-BRS service in competition with Aurigny but the Guernsey licensing authority rejected the application which was then withdrawn. 3 x daily across two airlines was probably thought excessive for the route.

A GCI-CWL application would be likely to succeed as the route is currently unserved.

I'm unable to confirm the post on the other forum at the moment and I won't begin a separate Blue Islands thread until or unless the route is officially confirmed.

Interesting development given that only today in the Blue Islands BRS thread I've been questioning the viability of the airline.

I've just seen that in the same forum! Lol. Would be interesting. One poster suggested them doing Jersey as well specifically as a double dropper. CWL-JER-GCI-CWL. Guessing this would be under the Flybe banner also it would have the advantage of freeing up an E190 once a week and a fly in Q400 once a week. Whether they would use an ATR 42 or 72 would be a guess but Guernsey would be a welcome edition.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

There are no details as to frequency or triangulating on the newspaper notice. I can find no further detail on the States of Guernsey website at present.

The licence for Aurigny on GCI-BRS has these conditions, inter alia:

Must be a minimum daily rotation May to September and minimum 4 x weekly October-April with an aircraft of at least 50 passenger seats. Occasional triangulating via a third point in accordance with other licences held by the operator is permissible.

The Flybe licence for GCI-EXT on the other hand states at least two rotations per day with an aircraft of a minimum of 50 passenger seats but it is permissible to triangulate via Jersey, and I think this is what Flybe does most of the time, ie a double drop.

So it could be that an Exeter-type operation might happen.

 

[superking]

jerry I came on the potential route page as we seemed to taken over the flybe page with stuff that does not relate to them.sorry I sound negative with what you have said. I want cdf to do well like yr self and I applaud you for that. I want to see new routes from cdf as well,but the routes have to be right. wrong routes that don't work other airlines look at that and they say we wont do any thing from there. a new route that works makes other airlines sit up and look if any other chance of something from there that would work.
you said on the flybe page that a airline with a A319 type would be good and I must agree. over many years cdf ran quite a few flights to Canada with different operators in the summer season and they worked, some via another british airport and some not. they were successful but they stopped for mostly operators going out of business.
so with them thoughts air Canada run A319 on 2 routes to lhr I think.so if cdf could talk to them to see if they would put one of those for a series of flights,also their low cost side rouge run flights to a few airports in the uk. with the Canada flights that worked it makes me wonder if cdf has spoken to air Canada or rouge about flights.
be positive with yr thoughts and things will happen. it takes time.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Just taking up superking's points, I know that Canada is nothing like the market it once was from many UK airports but CWL was preferred to BRS most of the time until the recession began to take hold and the Canada market diminished from nearly everywhere.

CWL had a weekly Air Transat service to Toronto Pearson for many years and in 2006/7 Zoom commenced services to both Toronto and Vancouver using B 767s. The service seemed to be doing well unlike the airline that ceased to trade within a couple of years. It must be assumed that the decision to choose CWL was a commercial rather than an operational one because the Zoom flights usually commenced at Gatwick or had an en route stage in Ireland before going to North America. The point I'm making is that 767s could have flown from BRS given the en-route stop.

Exeter too had an Air Transat service to Toronto in summer for many years which left BRS the odd one out of the three main south west Britain airports for much of the time. EXT's flight operated via another UK airport, BHX and NCL at various times and probably others as well, so again operational considerations would not have been a bar and EXT's runway is barely longer than BRS's anyway.

BRS always seemed to have bad luck when it began a Toronto service. In the late 80s/early 90s Odyssey International operated to Toronto Pearson via Newcastle (B 757s) but went bust within a couple of years. A few years later Royal Air (A 310s) came on the scene but was absorbed into Canada 3000 (B 757s) that continued the BRS route (via GLA) but then went out of business itself.

Fly Globespan that had a nationally dreadful reputation for poor service and operational unreliability (in the sense that flights were often cancelled or delayed) operated to Toronto Hamilton (a Ryanairesque version of Toronto it must be said given its distance from the city) from EXT in 2007 along with the Transat Toronto Pearson route. The Globespan flight was switched to BRS in summer 2008 but did poorly and was to be moved to CWL in summer 2009 but Globespan went out of business before it began flying from Wales.

So all this shows that history is on CWL's side when it comes to the Canada market from Severnside.

 

[Jerry]

I can be a bit over enthusiastic sometimes! 😆
The problem i see with CWL is that the sun routes will work fine and any operator will make money off them no problem but routes like Berlin or Dusseldorf or Munich will need experimenting with and dropped if they fail with new routes replacing them and codeshares boosting them. I wouldn't be surprised if next year Dusseldorf is quietly dropped and personally i would like them to try a weekly Toulon instead to access the Cote d'azur to provide a southern france destination and it's a sun route too! But until they try these routes they aren't really going to know what works and they will risk failure on some of them.
Didn't know Air Canada run A319s transatlantic. They are interesting as flights to Toronto would give the pax US immigration clearance in Toronto. The problem I believe with long haul is that the airport and WAG are fixated on the prestige routes like JFK or EWR or ME3 routes whereas routes like Toronto and Istanbul would do the same job just wouldn't look as glamorous on the destinations list!
Also I've never understood why there isn't Orlando flights in July and August considering that's the school holiday period!

 

[Tinkerman]

ITV News video here regarding Blue Islands CWL route. Basically states information that is already in the public domain, but both bosses seem quite upbeat about it (as you would expect) and makes commercial sense tying things up with BE. They say that their LCY service has increased in popularity since the BE franchise since people can connect onto BE services at LCY. Same principle this applies to CWL in addition to point-to-point GCI traffic.

 

[Jerry]

GCI would be a nice addition to the departure board! Wondering twice weekly like Jersey?

 

[Seasider]

......Didn't know Air Canada run A319s transatlantic.

I saw an Air Canada at LHR last month. I believe it flies to St Johns.

 

[Jerry]

Have been looking at Exeters figures for LCY and MAN for May and the LF's are 61% and 74% respectively. Which got me also wondering if LCY and MAN could be possible for CWL in the future especially MAN.
Can figures from an airport nearby with roughly the same sized (population based) catchment area as the other though maybe a richer area than one, be used as a broad base to determine whether flights will be potentially successful or not from an airport?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Exeter was one of those places thought to be too near London for an air route to be viable although the route had been tried at various times down the years. Flybe seems to be the most successful so far as passenger numbers are concerned, although the frequency was tweaked a few months after the LCY route started with one daily rotation withdrawn.

Exeter is a smaller city region than Cardiff although the Exeter city region is probably the most prosperous area, economically-speaking, in Devon and Cornwall. I doubt that it's richer per capita than the Cardiff region though.

Manchester seems the better bet to me with its Flybe connectivity from there. It might mean though that the airline is reluctant to put on additional direct destinations from CWL.

 

[Jerry]

I've been wondering how airlines figure out if potential regional routes like LCY and MAN are viable from smaller catchment areas like CWL and EXT?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Research but in the end it's sometimes down to 'suck it and see', hence the many marginal routes from many airports that don't last long. It's never an exact science.

 

[superking]

airports that loose new routes are not happy. its the last thing they want is loose a route as it seends messages to other airlines,that the revenue on a dropped route is not good and also lack of passengers.to set a new route costs lots of money with mainly advertiseing the route,not quite so bad if airline already at airport,but if not then lots of money to set up running a plane into airport.
airlines are a business not a charity and before they commit to any airport they are fairly sure the route will work. this post is not pointed at cwl its pointed as a general comment to all airports.

 

[Jerry]

Yeah it sounds like setting up each route is a gamble and also depends on the slot timings the airline can get!

 

[Jerry]

On twitter this morning a twitter account was tweeting potential routes to Flybe one was Murcia but another was Newquay! So would a CWL-NQY route potentially work even as a 2 a week possibly?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

On twitter this morning a twitter account was tweeting potential routes to Flybe one was Murcia but another was Newquay! So would a CWL-NQY route potentially work even as a 2 a week possibly?

You'd think that Flybe would have better options at CWL than NQY. Nothing against NQY or its hinterland. It's very popular and a number of UK airports do have flights there in summer, but they are airports in the main that are well catered for in terms of routes which CWL is not.

The last airline to fly CWL-NQY was Air Southwest that incorporated it in a NQY-CWL-MAN-CWL-NQY programme, I think 2 x daily. Loads were poor and it lasted around a year. Whether a limited summer-only route aimed at the leisure market might do better, I wouldn't like to hazard a guess.

 

[Jerry]

You'd think that Flybe would have better options at CWL than NQY.

Yes i thought it was an odd suggestion! A ferry would be more useful!
I know Cornwall is quite popular as tourist destination but as far as i know it's with the caravan and motorhomes lot!

 

[David_itl]

The thing that appears to sway Flybe's mind is travel times compared to road/rail and generally market size - presumably there are stats available indicating size of markets between major cities using all forms of transport.

I recently did Manchester-Caerphilly via Cardiff on Arriva Trains Wales and the Manchester-Cardiff part took roughly 3.5 hours. I don't recollect too many people getting off in Cardiff; that was getting the 6.30am train which is what you'd think business travellers would be getting in order to have a productive day's work in South Wales. Flying time would be around 50 to 55 minutes so you'd think it would cross their mind but it would be a lot better if any route was CWL-MAN-CWL so that it feeds into the Flybe domestic hub and allow access to the long-haul out of MAN. The downside is that I do think their DHC8s are too big seeing that the capacity is 76 passengers.

I'd love to say this has the makings of a Do328 route to be operated 3 times a day - in the morning then late afternoon and evening. The Flybe service between MAN and Norwich was started out as a 2 daily weekday DHC8 but was converted into the 3 daily weekday Do328; tighter control on capacity means fewer seats needing to be sold below costs.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

If it was CWL-MAN-CWL the aircraft would be a 118-seat E195 as that is the only aircraft type that Flybe bases at CWL (two of them to be precise). Your suggestion of a small Dornier would therefore be even more appropriate.