Bristol: Airport Runway Extension Plans

[Jerry]

transatlantic narrowbody routes is officially on.

Well they lost that race!

 

[Aviador]

Well they lost that race!

I was referring more to schedule year-round ops as opposed to more of a charter seasonal type operation.

 

[CAN&I]

The Competition Appeal Tribunal’s decision to flatly reject Bristol Airport's final appeal against the Welsh Government’s £205 million subsidy for Cardiff is a massive blow for BRS management. It essentially sets up a turf war just as Bristol Airport launches its highly controversial 15 million passenger expansion application. BRS had argued that pumping taxpayer cash into an "ailing" Cardiff breached subsidy rules, but with that legal avenue now dead, the race to land the region's first direct Middle Eastern or transatlantic narrowbody routes is officially on.

The legal avenue against the Welsh Government is not dead. Its very much still alive. Bristol Airport lodged a request for permission to appeal the CAT judgement at the Court of Appeal on June 12th. They are standing by their argument that the CAT process did not consider its case with a “sufficiently intense standard of review” and did not "apply competition law correctly" in its judgment as to whether the subsidy was both "unlawful" and "breached competition rules".

This is despite Bristol Airport's previous failure to convince the CAT that its inital appeal against the judgement was based on principal of law or process, as opposed to simply disagreeing with the outcome which, as previously warned, was not enough to seek permission to appeal.

Bristol Airport may be 2-0 down but they are not going to give the matter up easily. To grant permission for a full hearing, the Court of Appeal will require Bristol Airport to demonstrate that any subsequent appeal would have a "real prospect of success" or raises “a compelling reason" for the appeal to be heard.