Written question WQ87077
- Asked by
- Andrew RT DaviesConservative
- To be answered by
- Minister for Climate Change
- Tabled
- Due
- Answered
- Time to answer
- 11 days
Question
Was the Welsh Government aware of Wizz Air's plan to suspend flights from Cardiff Airport before its announcement, and did it offer any incentives to the company to prevent it from doing so?
Answer
Answered by Deputy Minister for Climate Change
The airport board was notified by Wizz Air less than 24 hours before the announcement was made. This was immediately relayed to the Welsh Government. We were bound by commercial confidentiality to protect their staff. The airport board asked if there was anything it could do to help reverse the decision and to save the base prior to the announcement and was advised that Wizz Air did not want any support from the airport. The company has cited general macroeconomic conditions as the reason for the decision. There is no suggestion of any problem with the support provided by the airport to the airline.
The Welsh Government has not provided any financial support or incentive to Wizz Air since it began operations at Cardiff Airport.
My officials work closely with the airport’s executive team and we are not aware of any such concerns being raised by any of the airlines currently operating from the airport.
Welsh Ministers do not intervene with airline decisions, or in the airport’s day-to-day commercial and operational decisions. The airport continues to work on finding new airlines to operate from the airport. It has achieved a positive recovery of the lost routes as a result of Flybe’s collapse in early 2020. The airport is seeing an increase in flights from companies such as KLM and Ryan Air, which have recently announced extra flights to Dublin, Malaga and Faro for summer 2023, and a new year-round route to Belfast.
We are happy with the effective leadership that the airport board and executive team demonstrated during the pandemic and continues to demonstrate during the current very challenging economic climate to build on the achievements that the airport was seeing before the pandemic. The progress on recovering passenger numbers over the last year is testament to their ability to manage an airport in turbulent times.
Cardiff Airport ranked seventh best airport in a Which? survey conducted in August 2022. Which? asked its members to complete an online survey about their experiences of flying from and to 28 UK airports/terminals in the last two years.