Ryanair has announced an expansion at Cardiff Airport for its coming winter season. The airline said that following its summer season it will for the winter season – commencing October 30 – maintain its flights to the Portuguese destination of Faro with two weekly services on Wednesdays and Sundays.
The airline has also confirmed that its route from the Welsh Government-owned airport to Dublin will also continue through the winter with four services weekly. The Dublin route service was launched last year. However Ryanair is not extending its summer route to Malaga into the winter. Since launching routes from Cardiff in 1990 the airport has handled one million Ryanair passengers.
While Hungarian-owned airline Wizz Air is mothballing its Cardiff base for the winter season it will operate two services for the winter season from the Rhoose-based airport to the Romanian capital of Bucharest and Milan (Malpensa). Wizz said it is committed to relaunching its base from Cardiff, with dedicated staff and cabin crew serving an aircraft, from next spring for what will be its second summer season.
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Chief executive of Cardiff Airport Spencer Birns said: “It is fantastic news that Ryanair is extending its Faro flying programme at Cardiff Airport into the winter season providing an increased choice of holiday options for those people looking to escape later in the year. We are pleased to see Ryanair growing further at Cardiff in the off-peak season after a busy summer with us. In addition we know that passengers using the new service will really appreciate the good customer service and uncrowded indoor terminal areas they experience at Cardiff Airport when going on their well-earned breaks.”
Ryanair’s director of commercial, Jason McGuinness said: "To allow our customers to book their winter getaway at the lowest possible fares we are launching a seat sale with fares available from just £19.99 one-way for travel from October until the end of next January, which must be booked by Friday, September 23.”
Latest figures from the Civil Aviation Authority show that in July the airport handled just over 122,000 passengers. That was a huge rise of 1,102% on July 2021 but has to be set against the context that the airport was effectively mothballed at the time due to the pandemic. The latest rolling year figure for the 12 months to the end of July show passengers numbers at just over 574,000 – a rise of 610% on the previous year.
The airport said it is on track to hit the target of seeing passenger numbers recovered to 50% of pre-Covid levels at the end of its current financial year to the end of March 2023. That would give an annualised passenger number of around 750,000. However the airport lags behind many other UK airports on the pandemic recovery percentage measure.
Cardiff Airport has seen strong demand for both its Belfast and Dublin routes and from November KLM will double the current number of weekly flights between Cardiff and Amsterdam from 20 to 40 a week. The frequency of the route had been impacted by staffing issues at Schiphol Airport – an issue experienced by many airports over the summer with pandemic restrictions lifted – which have now been resolved.
A decision has yet to be made as to when Qatar Airways will resume its scheduled Cardiff to Doha route. The airport remains in constant dialogue with the airline which launched its route in 2018 before suspending it due to Covid. For the World Cup in November the Football Association of Wales has chartered four planes from the airport for Welsh fans through its travel provider Wonky Sheep.
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