The other day, whilst logging in to Linkedin I found lots of people congratulating me on completing three years at FlyCardiff. As most of you know the FlyCardiff campaign is run by a small team of enthusiastic volunteers who fit it in around their day jobs.
Our third anniversary, got us thinking and reflecting about the past three years. To quote Andrias Maszcyzk, the general manager of the St Davids Hotel and Spa in Cardiff, " There is an airport which has huge potential when it comes to attracting flights from Europe and further afield. But it has to attract people from Europe and North America." Here here
In 2011 when we started the campaign, after the news that BMI Baby was to cease operations from Cardiff in the Autumn, this represented the lowest ebb for our national Airport. An unispiring head to head on local Radio with the then Airport MD (Patrick Duffy) did nothing to reassure us about the airport's future in fact quite the opposite. But against all the odds the 4th largest low-cost operator, www.Vueling.com, were enticed to Wales serving Barcelona initially (in 2012) later adding Palma, Alicante and Malaga to their Cardiff routes network.
I don't know about you but we are quietly confident that your airport has a brighter future. Not even the "hammer blow", as the press described it, of Flybe pulling the Glasgow and Paris routes was able to deflect the current management team in their bid to revitalise the airport. In a very short space of time (maybe a world record) www.cityjet.com were in place to take on the routes, so there was no gap in service.
Add to that the recent small, but significant, step which saw Ryanair come back to Cardiff to offer the Tenerife route from October this year.
One of the FlyCardiff team took some photos on Tuesday this week (which we've posted on our Facebook page) which showed a full to the rafters Cardiff Airport. So as long as the public continue to get behind and support Vueling, CityJet, KLM, AerLingus, Thomson. Thomas Cook, Air Malta etc the future looks a lot better than it did in 2011.
Like we've said many times, Success breeds Success.
No comments:
Post a Comment