A former airline boss says Cardiff Airport was built in the wrong place to attract enough passengers to make it viable. David Bryon, an ex-director of BMI Baby, also said that no-one in their "right mind" would invest in the airport.
He was speaking after the airport was dealt a significant blow when Wizz Air announced it was permanently closing its base, just nine months after launching a base there. You can find more details on that here.
When it first launched owners spoke of their hopes of eventually introducing new routes from the Welsh base, but just three months later cancelled the majority of its services for six months, before eventually announcing it was completely withdrawing from the airport citing "the challenging macro-economic environment and high operational costs".
Read more: Where did it all go so wrong for Cardiff Airport?
BMI Baby operated at the airport between 2002 and 2011, and former director Mr Bryon has been speaking to BBC Wales. He said: "Nobody in their right mind would look at investing in the airport as an infrastructure. It's not an attractive proposition as an airport for an investor."
He added that BMI Baby had considered Cardiff a "key attraction" thinking it could grow the number of passengers to the airport, but he claimed that the location on the coast at Rhoose was an issue. "There just isn't the volume of passengers. Not only is Cardiff Airport on the coast, which limits its catchment, it's on the wrong side of Cardiff," he said. "Its location, unfortunately, is all wrong.
"You look at Bristol, which is somewhere in the region of eight or nine million, and then we go up to 14 million for Birmingham... you've got to really get to that four to five million [passengers] to be able to make the airport viable. If we look at Monday, there are seven flights taking off, and seven landing back at Cardiff."
In a statement Cardiff Airport said they were "deeply disappointed" after the Wizz Air announcement. A spokesman added: "Four of our existing airlines are still planning operations from Cardiff to all the destinations that Wizz were selling tickets to. We encourage those customers who had booked on Wizz this year, to consider an alternative choice to fly to their chosen destinations from Cardiff with TUI, Vueling Ryanair and KLM. We will continue our conversations with other airlines and partners to encourage that they offer more choice to fly from Cardiff at cost effective prices for our customers."
The history of Cardiff Airport on its present site extends back to the early 1940s when the Air Ministry requisitioned land in the rural Vale of Glamorgan to set up a wartime satellite aerodrome and training base for RAF Spitfire pilots. The first civilian flights from the old Cardiff Municipal Airport at Pengam Moors were transferred to Rhoose on April 1, 1954.
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