Qatar Airways

[Jarvo]

A lot of the feedback I see about the route is about the convenience it brings in bringing people close to home and negating a journey back from lhr. I wonder if for the West country that convenience is lessened?

I know this is a dead horse that's been flogged way too many times on these forums, but I truly believe it's the only way cwl is going to draw any significant West country traffic from LHR.
Considering the Welsh Gov is spending ~100m on the link road through Pendoylan to improve connectivity for the airport to the M4, I'm even more surprised Transport for Wales (TFW) didn't include a roughly £20-30m spur to the airport from the Vale of Glamorgan line in the metro plans.
This, on top of a relatively modest subsidy to the train operating companies, would improve the access to CWL from the wealthier markets in the West Country so much more effectively.
If the Welsh Gov could then negotiate with GWR to extend their Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff and Taunton to Cardiff services, there would be a half hourly service through Bristol, Filton Abbey Wood and Newport directly to the airport. That would be on top of connecting Bath, Bradford-upon-Avon, Salisbury, Southampton, Western-Super-Mare and more than 20 other stations in the SW with an hourly service to the airport. The Taunton train in particular stops at most of the outer lying Bristol suburbs such as Yatton, Worle and Bedminster.

The one place such a route and subsidy won't stand up for now, is on the value for money for the tax payer. With the Legal and General industrial park planned for next to the airport, the arithmetic may change on that rather rapidly.
But it's definitely a significant way the Welsh Gov could add value to CWL without breaking state aid rules or burdening the airport with more loans.

Just think, not just about connectivity to the airport either, but the advertisement for the airport. Every half hour, at Bristol Temple Meads and at so many others, there would be tannoy announcements, information screens and millions of journeys a year from places like Romsey to Salisbury, all on the Cardiff Airport train. The reinforcement of the ease of access and, in a lot of cases, the airport's existence would be priceless.
The fact is, Cardiff is never going to have 'those orange planes' nor is it going to have the destinations of LHR. As it stands, access to CWL is an afterthought once a decision is made to fly to or from there.
Having the only regular, direct train service from such an affluent area to an airport would surely be a massive boon when it comes to competing for new routes.
For relatively modest investment, access to CWL could so easily be the airport's 'orange plane'.

 

[Foxlimayankee]

I wonder if connectivity would improve and increase passenger loads if Qatar changed to a split service in terms of flght times similar to what they do at BHX where although its a daily flight it is split 3/4 weekly between early morning and middle of the day.

Although this improves connectivity it reduces frequency of those connections seems to work at BHX and does set up the route for any increases in future which origiinally was eight per week so you never know.

It already is. The timings are either around 8am or 1555 depending on the day. That works well if your travel dates are flexible as some days will have better connection times. If travel dates aren't flexible, thats where lengthy connection times are off putting.

 

[rollo]

It already is. The timings are either around 8am or 1555 depending on the day. That works well if your travel dates are flexible as some days will have better connection times. If travel dates aren't flexible, thats where lengthy connection times are off putting.

Oops sorry just assumed it was same time every day, that'll teach me to research more lol.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I know this is a dead horse that's been flogged way too many times on these forums, but I truly believe it's the only way cwl is going to draw any significant West country traffic from LHR.
Considering the Welsh Gov is spending ~100m on the link road through Pendoylan to improve connectivity for the airport to the M4, I'm even more surprised Transport for Wales (TFW) didn't include a roughly £20-30m spur to the airport from the Vale of Glamorgan line in the metro plans.
This, on top of a relatively modest subsidy to the train operating companies, would improve the access to CWL from the wealthier markets in the West Country so much more effectively.
If the Welsh Gov could then negotiate with GWR to extend their Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff and Taunton to Cardiff services, there would be a half hourly service through Bristol, Filton Abbey Wood and Newport directly to the airport. That would be on top of connecting Bath, Bradford-upon-Avon, Salisbury, Southampton, Western-Super-Mare and more than 20 other stations in the SW with an hourly service to the airport. The Taunton train in particular stops at most of the outer lying Bristol suburbs such as Yatton, Worle and Bedminster.

The one place such a route and subsidy won't stand up for now, is on the value for money for the tax payer. With the Legal and General industrial park planned for next to the airport, the arithmetic may change on that rather rapidly.
But it's definitely a significant way the Welsh Gov could add value to CWL without breaking state aid rules or burdening the airport with more loans.

Just think, not just about connectivity to the airport either, but the advertisement for the airport. Every half hour, at Bristol Temple Meads and at so many others, there would be tannoy announcements, information screens and millions of journeys a year from places like Romsey to Salisbury, all on the Cardiff Airport train. The reinforcement of the ease of access and, in a lot of cases, the airport's existence would be priceless.
The fact is, Cardiff is never going to have 'those orange planes' nor is it going to have the destinations of LHR. As it stands, access to CWL is an afterthought once a decision is made to fly to or from there.
Having the only regular, direct train service from such an affluent area to an airport would surely be a massive boon when it comes to competing for new routes.
For relatively modest investment, access to CWL could so easily be the airport's 'orange plane'.

I've 'liked' your post because I think it is an imaginative suggestion, and one the WG might consider (or something like it) were it minded to substantially improve rail access to CWL. I'm not sure how feasible it would be in practice - longer overall journey times on the Portsmouth and Taunton lines leading to a requirement for additional trains and pathways to maintain the current frequency is an obvious corollary - or whether the additional passengers it might pick up would justify an undoubted significant cost.

The proposed spur from the GWR main line into LHR seems more likely at present and that would make access to LHR from South Wales and South West England that much more convenient, although unlike your idea the LHR spur would require a change of train, probably at Reading, for those coming from the Cardiff and Bristol direction.

Western Rail Link to Heathrow - Network Rail

A proposed new direct rail link from the West to Heathrow will improve journeys to Britain’s busiest airport and help increase economic productivity in the Thames Valley. As part of our Railway Upgrade Plan the Department for Transport asked us to develop plans to build a new 6.5km rail link...

www.networkrail.co.uk

 

[mathers_wales_uk]

There will never be a spur to Cardiff Airport if the terminal remained in its current location.

The reason for this is that it will be objected by people with really deep pockets and know wealthy individuals.

They will fight it every tooth & nail to ensure it won’t pass.

 

[superking]

Every thing in this day and age seems to get objected,what ever it may be.

 

[Jarvo]

On a slightly different note, because I do realize I went off on a bit of a fantasy driven rant the other day
I've seen on social media that the flight on Monday was overbooked, and the couple who were bumped managed to get a business class upgrade for the next day... and the Business class looks pretty full that day too from their pictures...August looks like it may have pretty good stats at that rate

 

[Jerry]

July and August and September should be the months that the airport doesn't struggle to fill the aircraft.

 

[aviatorconcorde]

The Economy load for tomorrow looks good from what I can see.

 

[Jerry]

A comment elsewhere today about the Executive lounge and what it offers to business class passengers ie no hot food etc made me wonder whether Qatar Airways consider that to be important from an airport like Cardiff for their passengers.
The lounge was revamped before the Doha flights started so I'd have thought that Qatar would have had input into the lounge product that would be offered and if they felt hot food was a neccesity CWL would've included it.
As a business class passenger flying from a regional airport I wonder if you essentially sacrifice the top class lounge experience for the convenience of flying locally?

 

[Seasider]

Surely lounge facilities should be the same , or very similar, which ever airport you fly from. I would imagine that it is not Qatar's lounge but Cardiff's therefore they would accept slightly different offerings to their own lounges.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

A comment elsewhere today about the Executive lounge and what it offers to business class passengers ie no hot food etc made me wonder whether Qatar Airways consider that to be important from an airport like Cardiff for their passengers.
The lounge was revamped before the Doha flights started so I'd have thought that Qatar would have had input into the lounge product that would be offered and if they felt hot food was a neccesity CWL would've included it.
As a business class passenger flying from a regional airport I wonder if you essentially sacrifice the top class lounge experience for the convenience of flying locally?

Some major airlines use ‘third party’ lounges, particularly at smaller airports around the world. They are not always up to the standard of an airline’s own lounges, or (depending on the airline) might in some cases be better.

I have a reasonable experience of Emirates lounges at a number of airports including three in the UK (LHR, LGW and BHX) and by and large they are of a broadly comparable standard which I judge to be good. Apart from Dubai, where there are separate lounges for first and business class passengers, the others I’ve used cater for both classes.

There is always a decent array of hot and cold meals, snacks and a wide selection of beverages, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic.

To answer your question, a good lounge is something my wife and I take into serious consideration when we book ultra long-haul journeys (we fly to Australia most years VFR) as we often dine in the lounge before the flight, but this can depend on the time of day of departure. In itself a poor lounge provision would not necessarily be something that would deter us flying from an airport if that airport had other advantages, one of which might be its relative proximity to our point of origin.

 

[Jerry]

To answer your question, a good lounge is something my wife and I take into serious

But would you expect though a lounge at Cardiff to be the same standard as the one st Heathrow? And would you essentially be sacrificing the lounge experience essentially for the convenience of flying more locally?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

But would you expect though a lounge at Cardiff to be the same standard as the one st Heathrow? And would you essentially be sacrificing the lounge experience essentially for the convenience of flying more locally?

I've never used Qatar whether at LHR or anywhere else but if speaking generally about airlines and lounges I would hope that all lounges used by a particular airline were of broadly the same standard at every airport they used. However, because I have an interest in aviation and because I'm one of those people who check everything that I can to the nth degree I would be be aware of the standard I might expect with the airline and airport I was checking.

I don't want to dodge your question but can't really elaborate on what I said in my previous post. There are a number of factors that determine our choice of both airline and UK airport when flying what I call ultra long-haul, and local departure points and lounge standard are but two of several. With us it would not be simply a case of weighing local availability against the standard of lounge. When we are flying that sort of distance we are not too bothered if the surface journey to the airport takes an hour or two but we are solely leisure travellers these days.

My gut feeling is that with many people a local departure, assuming everything else such as fare price, timings were satisfactory, would probably outweigh a poor lounge provision.

I've checked the Qatar website and it seems that only LHR has a Qatar lounge. The airline appears to use third party lounges at its other UK airports, so there might be a variation across the UK anyway.

 

[Jerry]

I suppose in the end it'll come down to personal choice.

 

[Foxlimayankee]

CWL is quite unique as most UK Airports either an Aspire or No1 lounge as a minimum, then other brands and Airline own brand lounges.
The Aspire grand is the offering from Swissport (formerly run by Servisair) and in recent years have been upgrading their offering. The Aspire brand seen at most Airports offer hot foot and a range of complimentary drinks and many have been refurbished recently. There is also the Aspire plus brand which is separate and not located in as many Airports, but offers a more cosy lounge, with age restrictions, and a slightly better offering of food and drink (Proesseco etc included free). However recently Aspire has improved it's hot food offering so isn't much different to Plus lounges. No1 Lounges offer a standard product that is similar to that of Aspire Plus. I've used the BHX No1 lounge and it is very big and offers a good range, whereas there is only a standard Aspire which is quite small.
Compare that to what CWL offers and the others are far superior to what CWL offers. CWL have always taken pride in their lounge, but in true CWL stubbornness they refuse to allow an outside brand to come in. When you compare prices in the bar currently (Over £5 for a pint, and more than £10 for a standard meal), it is worth it, if you can make use of the drinks and the limited snacks, as well as the peace and quiet. But I think the point everyone raises, is that it doesn't compare at all to what you get in other Airports lounges, and not much difference in price.
I've not seen the refurbished lounge, but from memory of how it was before and Jerry's review video, it doesn't seem anything special in terms of furnishings and decoration. Other lounges offer a much cosier and more designed space, with more segregated and private seating areas.
Although it's probably not top of the list of investments required, it certainly should be on the list of things that need to improve. Even basic things like better seating layouts and more cosier feel, an offering of better cold food, such as sandwichs, bagguettes etc.
I'm surprised QR didn't ask for more, unless they were offered a deal that they couldn't refuse for their business customers. The bonus for QR customers in terms of food is that they will get a decent meal on board.

 

[KARFA]

But would you expect though a lounge at Cardiff to be the same standard as the one st Heathrow? And would you essentially be sacrificing the lounge experience essentially for the convenience of flying more locally?

Speaking as someone who does a lot of travel and experiences lounges at the hubs and the outstations for various airlines including QR - my answer would be of course I wouldn't expect the same standard of lounge at CWL compared to LHR or DOH. I would be surprised if anyone who has been to the QR lounges at LHR (catering for 6 flights a day for both F/J passengers) could expect an outstation with one flight a day to have the same provision. If lounge is critical than I suspect you would avoid booking QR from CWL/MAN/EDI/BHX/LGW.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

The bonus for QR customers in terms of food is that they will get a decent meal on board.

I've read more than once that Qatar's onboard catering is as good as any airline's and better than most. That would go some way to balancing poor lounge provision at CWL, if it is poor.

 

[Jerry]

Looking at Qatar and at the moment for May 2020 they are down for 6 weekly flights with just no flight on Wednesday and it goes daily from the last week of May.

 

[Foxlimayankee]

That's good. Was it 5x weekly May just gone?