Flying over Cardiff didn’t make sense

AS a Welshman, who once lived in Swansea and had the same pleasure of Gower as Owain Jones, as well as having the good fortune of travelling the world extensively, I read Chris Pyke’s May 27 report with great interest (“The Welshman helping Cardiff to get airborne”).

As far as travelling to parts of the world to the east and south of Wales was concerned it made sense to fly by KLM from Cardiff Airport to Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport, which I and my late wife, Sue, did for many a year.

The standout example was the nine years we lived in Lesotho that allowed us to land at Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo Airport, from where to take a flight to Lesotho’s Maseru Airport.

What did not make economic sense, as far as Wales was concerned, was the need to travel by road to London Heathrow or Gatwick to take return flights from there to the western hemisphere over Cardiff Airport, which we did with many visits to the USA, as well as one to Canada and another to Mexico.

These were in the days that preceded the growing concern about global warming and the polluting factors, including air travel, contributing to it. This is where Mr Pyke’s article becomes relevant.

Apart from the global warming and polluting issues I would have no problem with Mr Jones in the leisure market.

However, I believe that a better plan for Cardiff Airport would be to provide an air service to Dublin Airport.

This would enable us to connect with onward flights from there in a westerly direction across the Atlantic to the Americas as we seek markets to compensate for the folly of Brexit: it would also contribute to tackling global warming caused by road travel to and back from English airports that would be needed to access the flights from there to the other side of the Atlantic.

Derek Griffths Pontcanna, Cardiff