Wizz Air

[superking]

Only pictures you would get is on landing as they were all too high with cloud. Only 1 went over Swansea. the rest made a bee line for CWL.

 

[Sean123]

Just had a flypast over the house!

 

[Sean123]

All 4 just flew by, top stuff!!

 

[Jerry]

Only pictures you would get is on landing as they were all too high with cloud. Only 1 went over Swansea. the rest made a bee line for CWL.

All 4 then returned to fly over Swansea later on.

 

[Jerry]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1368223457813610500

 

[Jerry]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1368240481096843273

 

[Pontyboy]

A good bit of PR for the airline and the airport today considering we have nothing better to do than look to the skies today!
did anyone get a name of the line maintenance company that will service the Wizz aircraft. I did read an article alongside the aero news one but now I can’t find it online. There was definitely a company mentioned in the article.

 

[Jerry]

A good bit of PR for the airline and the airport today considering we have nothing better to do than look to the skies today!
did anyone get a name of the line maintenance company that will service the Wizz aircraft. I did read an article alongside the aero news one but now I can’t find it online. There was definitely a company mentioned in the article.

Storm Aviation has been mentioned as the line maintenance company.

 

[Jerry]

Amazing photo is this.

***Please Read Forum Terms of Service***SouthWalesAviationGroup/permalink/3782631791784334/

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I note some scepticism about the flypast on you know where - anything positive about CWL on that forum seems to generate a lot of negativity from some quarters.

I agree with those who believe it's a clever marketing ploy.

It brings the airline to the notice of many potential travellers who aren't interested in aviation for its own sake and some would not even have been aware about Wizz and CWL. Furthermore, four aircraft can give an impression to this sort of potential clientele that the operation is bigger than it currently is (but might well grow to in time) which is no bad thing when bringing the name of a new airline to a region, or in this case to a country.

Even, as some suggest and might well be the case, if the airport has provided generous parking terms for Wizz aircraft not actually operating from CWL the airport will itself see a payback from this publicity.

I see it as a win all round.

 

[Jerry]

It got good engagement and was a successful piece of PR for the airport and Wizz. Unfortunately some on the other forum just don't seem to like positive things when it comes to Cardiff.

 

[Jerry]

There is some more photos of the flyover in the article.

In Photos: The Wizz Air UK Wales Flyover

After writing about the upcoming opening of Wizz Air UK’s new base in South Wales yesterday, we thought…

simpleflying.com

 

[Jerry]

Could we see Wizz take on the Edinburgh route in the future?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1371942576065019906

 

[Foxlimayankee]

I imagine the focus would be LTN/LGW, but it could well be a possibility at CWL.
I've been analysing the passenger numbers to Edinburgh from both Cardiff and Bristol.
It's clear to see the ups and downs at CWL with different operators on the route including BMI baby, Cityjet and Flybe, with the peak being at just over 160K passengers a year in 2008/2009.
I'm not entirely sure of the operators at BRS aside from Easyjet, but there appears to be quite a dive in passenger numbers from 2006 to 2007 which continued to fall each year until 2011, where bmibaby closed it's base in Oct 2011.

I've also added the total passengers carried in the South Wales & BRS region (not including EXT).
In 2010 CWL lost just over 50k passengers yet BRS also lost about 8k passengers, which it would be expected that BRS would naturally see rises due to CWL's loss.
In 2011 CWL lost nearly 30k passengers, whereas BRS gained just under 60k passengers and then continued to see moderate rises year on year from there on.

What is interesting however is how when Flybe opened the base in 2015 that both Airports saw continual rises year on year up to 2019. Even when it's clear CWL was winning back passengers with the Flybe increases, BRS was also seeing rises. No doubt there was a price war happening and it was attracting more travellers both sides of the bridge.

What does this mean for a potential Wizz route?

A single daily A321 with 230 seats would equate to approx 168K passengers. There's a few if's and but's in this scenario as a single daily flight wouldn't attract time sensitive business travellers.
Switch that to double daily and it's approx 335K passengers, or the equivilant of what EZY are carrying each year with higher frequency.

Compare that to if a second based aircraft is put in to CWL and it's an A320 with 189 seats.
Single daily = 137k seats
Double daily = 276k seats

(The above is roughly calculated on all 365 days of the year being included as standard. Obviously frequencies could be decreased on weekends and Christmas period etc. )

One question in this scenario is how much more potential traffic could 2 low-cost operators stimulate on the route? If Wizz put up a good fight seeing Easyjet reduce it's frequency and seat capacity to around the 300k year mark. Would there be demand for around 575k sold seats per year in the region?

Also the biggest question, could CWL sustain double daily frequency on most days of the week and provide enough demand to meet the approx 250k available seats? The highest volume seen since 2005 only being around 162k mark.
Even with Flybe around there were still a lot of Welsh people that used Easyjet from BRS. Wizz have a lower cost base, meaning they can offer lower fares, comparable if not lower than Easyjet. bmibaby, Flybe and Cityjet could never really compete with Easyjet on price due to having higher operating costs.

View attachment 23110

 

[Jerry]

Personally I don't see them looking at double daily flights. Obviously its a big if but if they launched Edinburgh I could see them operating a morning 7am departure Monday to Friday and a late afternoon one on Sundays. Maybe no Wednesday flight. So the route would be 5 to 6 weekly. Not business friendly yes but I feel there'll be less business travel in the future so the target will be VFR and leisure and inbound tourism.
At least the route would be back as at the moment I don't see it returning any time soon.

 

[superking]

The A321 is the wrong aircraft to sustain flights. Wizz are ruthless cutting flights that dont add up for them.The right size of aircraft for the route is one in around the 100 seat size.

 

[Jerry]

The A321 is the wrong aircraft to sustain flights. Wizz are ruthless cutting flights that dont add up for them.The right size of aircraft for the route is one in around the 100 seat size.

Well they don't have those aircraft so IF they did it would be A321 or A320.
I think we need to remember that BMIbaby used to operate a daily 148 seater aircraft i believe. IF Cardiff was to receive a 2nd based A320 then that's not too far away from that.

 

[Foxlimayankee]

The A320 makes more sense as a second based aircraft. Trying to fill an A321 on any route from CWL is ambitious at the moment. However the more seats, the better cost per passenger, meaning fares can be lower to really compete with other Airports.
Wizz has to work for CWL or they will run out of options.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Many thanks for that detailed contribution, Foxlimayankee - plenty of food for thought.

I'm not entirely sure of the operators at BRS aside from Easyjet, but there appears to be quite a dive in passenger numbers from 2006 to 2007 which continued to fall each year until 2011, where bmibaby closed it's base in Oct 2011.

BAConnect operated up to 5 x daily to EDI (and to GLA) from BRS against easyJet's up to 3 x daily until May 2007 when Flybe bought BAConnect and promptly closed the 5-aircraft BRS base and discontinued nearly all the routes, including EDI. That left easyJet operating 3 x daily which was the main reason for the drop in passenger numbers, although the major world recession at that time also played its part.

I've also added the total passengers carried in the South Wales & BRS region (not including EXT).
In 2010 CWL lost just over 50k passengers yet BRS also lost about 8k passengers, which it would be expected that BRS would naturally see rises due to CWL's loss.
In 2011 CWL lost nearly 30k passengers, whereas BRS gained just under 60k passengers and then continued to see moderate rises year on year from there on.

2009 was the the only year that BRS saw an overall drop in passenger numbers across its network because of the recession - just under 10%. The airport began a modest overall recovery in passenger numbers in 2010 but not across all its routes, and most of its then domestic network saw fewer passengers than in 2009 (EDI, GLA, ABZ, INV, NCL, MAN, LBA, PLH, NQY, IOS, BFS, JER, GCI).

What is interesting however is how when Flybe opened the base in 2015 that both Airports saw continual rises year on year up to 2019. Even when it's clear CWL was winning back passengers with the Flybe increases, BRS was also seeing rises. No doubt there was a price war happening and it was attracting more travellers both sides of the bridge.

As BRS recovered strongly from the recession effects from around 2014 that led to major passenger growth in the next five years easyJet increased frequency on its main Scottish routes from that airport, up to 4 x daily on EDI, later up to 5 x daily together with more A320s replacing A319s and pre-pandemic A321s on some of the flights. It had shown EDI as up to 6 x daily in its timetable published last summer for later in 2020 in the expectation (hope probably) that the pandemic recovery would have been in place, but it's now back to its pre-pandemic level of 27 x weekly (5 on Mon, Thur and Fri, 4 on Sun and Tues, 3 on Wed, 1 on Sat).

With the thought that more people will work from home in future with a consequent greater reliance on Zoom-like communication, even after the pandemic has lessened its grip, there might be less of a demand for routes like EDI that carry a significant proportion of business travellers.

Incidentally, here seems to be a typo in your table for 2014. BRS-EDI carried 322,760 passengers that year, not the 233,760 shown. That will also affect the percentage change for 2014.

Addendum

Don't rule out Ryanair's appearance on more UK domestic routes. It told a WG committee that APD was holding it back at CWL, although it would probably have said that about any airport because the airline been mounting a crusade for many years against aviation taxes such as APD. If the UK government reduces them Ryanair might have to put its money where its mouth is to justify its long-standing campaign, although such niceties probably won't bother its senior management much.

 

[Pontyboy]

I suppose whatever way you look at it; daily/double daily, Aircraft should be 100 seats etc etc. If Wizz did launch a double daily Edinburgh on a 320 or a 321 then they would be the airline to make a success out of it. Price and frequency would need to be there to make a route like Edinburgh grow. Let’s put it another way. It would carry a lot passengers than what Flybe did and would be a real alternative to EasyJet at Bristol. True competition.