Are things about to take off for airport?

IT HAS been a tough few years for Cardiff Airport, the pandemic having knocked its passenger growth off course and with it any hope of moving closer to a pre-tax profit.

However, while a long road to recovery lies ahead there are positive signs that passenger numbers are heading in the right direction with latest annualised figures now close to a million – around 60% of the prepandemic figure – and Qatar Airways close to confirming the recommencing of its scheduled service to Doha.

However, airlines can go as quickly as they come, as the airport discovered with the short duration of Wizz Air. If they see an opportunity to deploy aircraft elsewhere on more profitable routes, they will.

It is a decade since the Welsh Government acquired the airport, claiming at the time, as it continues to do, that without its intervention it would have closed. Well perhaps, but that well-worn thesis was never tested in the marketplace.

However, many regional and smaller national airports globally are publicly owned or have a taxpayer stake. Including the £52m acquisition cost from Spanish firm Abertis, some £200m of taxpayers’ money has been pumped into the airport over the past 10 years. It is therefore understandable that it has become something of a political football. However, it is not an airport run day to day by remote civil servants, but via an arm’s length commercial company.

Airports like Cardiff make money not from charging airlines landing fees, but from what passengers spend through their terminal buildings. Cardiff has seen a significant displacement within its core south Wales catchment to rival Bristol Airport, attracted by a greater variety of routes at prices and times that suit.

At some stage the Welsh Government could look to recoup part of its investment by a sale or part-sale, but whatever the ownership model it would be hard to envisage a globally focused small nation without a commercial airport.

Can Cardiff Airport be truly sustainable? Well it is not that long ago, under the then ownership of TBI, that it had annual passenger numbers of more than two million. The asset was a profitable part of its portfolio which allowed it to pay handsome dividends to shareholders.

The airport is looking to build a more diversified revenue stream by reducing its dependence on passengers, in areas like freight, as well as from aviation testing and maintenance, repair and overhaul activities.

Cardiff Airport has its challenges, but also significant potential, which hopefully can be realised for the benefit of the wider Welsh economy.