Flights between Cardiff and Ynys Mon will not resume after a two-year suspension, the Welsh Government has announced. Since 2016, Welsh Government has invested £8.4m on subsidising the service.
The service, which has run since 2007, operated via a public service obligation. It has been suspended since March 2020 due to the impact of the Covid pandemic. It was operated by Eastern Airways and on peak weeks ran 10 services between Monday and Friday.
The business case now shows there is no longer the demand and the impact of the service on the carbon footprint has also been assessed. After the lengthy suspension it will not be restarted and instead the Welsh Government says it will put the money into improving public transport services for the north but admitted that will not come into force immediately. This decision ends the air service permanently and does not allow another operator or business model to take it over.
Read more: Devastating passenger number figures show how hard hit Cardiff Airport has been
Since 2016-17 Welsh Government has spent the following on the scheme:
2016-17: £1,080,000
2017-18: £1,860,000
2018-19: £1,666,250
2019-20: £1,981,191
2020-21: £753,422
2021-22: £919,824
Year to date: £168,763
In the 2018-19 financial year the service had 14,603 passengers and in 2019-20 there were 13,930. In 2020-21 and 2021-22 there were no services due to the pandemic.
As it made the announcement a government spokesman said 77% of the people who had been travelling on the air link service used it for work purposes but changes in home-working patterns have now shifted such arrangements. An independent study commissioned by the Welsh Government into the carbon impact of the service showed the flights had a more negative impact on the environment than any other form of travel between Ynys Mon and Cardiff unless it was flying close to full capacity every day which, given the significant reduction in business travel since the pandemic, would be highly unlikely. Carbon impact analysis concluded that 28 out of 29 seats available on the aeroplane would have to be full on every flight to bring the per passenger aircraft emissions down to the same as single-occupancy car.
The Welsh Government say that "despite common perceptions" the air service was not always the fastest link to Cardiff from north Wales and especially east of Bangor where rail travel is actually faster door-to-door. They say "investment in new rail carriages, with wi-fi, comfortable workspaces, and onboard catering means that the Holyhead to Cardiff rail service now offers a much more attractive proposition for those who still need to travel on business between the north and the south".
Deputy minister for climate change Lee Waters, who has responsibility for transport, said: "The pandemic has driven huge change to the way people work with a reduction in business travel over the past few years. We don’t think passenger levels will return to a level that makes this service viable economically or environmentally. Instead we will invest the money saved from running the service into improving public transport in north Wales. This will benefit more people and help us reach our net zero target by 2050.
"We need to achieve greater reductions in our emissions in the next decade than we’ve achieved over the course of the last three decades if we are to avert catastrophic climate change. It’s going to an uphill challenge and difficult choices will need to be confronted."
The plans also bring forward work to improve rail journey times and service between Holyhead and Cardiff and improve integration with other sustainable modes of travel along the route to meet the Welsh Government’s ambitions for four trains per hour on the north Wales mainline and easier, faster rail access to south Wales. The work will also look at options for doubling the bus service frequency between Caernarfon and Porthmadog to improve connectivity to rail links to south and mid Wales. The Welsh Government also says it will provide £4m worth of funding for Bangor University to pioneer cutting-edge technology to develop better broadband coverage in rural areas.
The Conservatives have welcomed the move. Welsh Conservative shadow transport minister Natasha Asghar MS said she believed it was the "right decision", adding: "I despise any task that fritters away taxpayers’ hard-earned money and keeping this service going would have done just that.
"It is, however, disappointing that Labour ministers have only now axed the airlink." She said instead they "should’ve taken decisive action and scrapped it as soon as it became a loss-making exercise".
