As you know, airlines announce new flights all the time. The deepening gloom of late November is a particularly beneficial moment to tell the world about fresh travel opportunities for the summer ahead.
Rarely, though, is a four-times-a-week departure on a narrow-bodied plane from a relatively small airport given public backing by a national leader. Yet that is exactly what has happened with the new link from Cardiff airport.
The destination: Toronto. The airline: WestJet. The leader: Eluned Morgan, first minister of Wales.
As the route was unveiled, she said: “This is welcome news for passengers, businesses and our tourism industries, both in Wales and Canada. With good connections to other Canadian cities, the new Toronto route will open up new economic opportunities for Wales in North America.”
Between May and September next year, the 3,444-mile journey out to Canada’s largest city is scheduled to take just under eight hours, and just over seven hours on the return leg. Yet the aircraft being used is a Boeing 737 Max aircraft with only 174 seats on board – meaning fewer than 700 each way, each week.
So why is this such a significant moment in aviation for Wales?
Well, from a traveller’s perspective, flying to and from Cardiff is a joy. London Heathrow handles more passengers in four days than the Welsh airport sees in a year. Unlike almost all other UK airports, fewer people pass through Cardiff than they did three decades ago. Numbers have roughly halved since the Noughties.
Airport finances are all about scale: fixed costs are extremely high, marginal costs (the additional expense of handling another passenger) are very low. When times are good and the passengers are flocking in, the profits flow in. But when the tumbleweed is rolling through duty-free and past the Tap + Brew Craft Bar and Kitchen, losses rack up all too quickly.
Every passenger passing through Cardiff airport is subsidised by the taxpayer to the tune of £20. Which is why the new transatlantic link is important enough to divert the first minister from her other duties.
For two sunny years from 2018, Wales was one stop from the other side of the world. Thanks to a Qatar Airways link, you could fly from Cardiff to Auckland, Bali or Colombo with a single stop in Doha. But when Covid struck in March 2020, the route was axed. It has not returned.
Airports are about flights, flights, flights – but they are also about location, location, location. Cardiff airport is handy for people lucky enough to live in Penarth or Barry. But its location, beside the southernmost tip of Wales, means half the catchment area is the Bristol Channel. For people who live in eastern Cardiff, the road journey can take the best part of an hour.
A national capital needs an international airport with as many connections as possible – going beyond the usual Mediterranean suspects of Alicante, Malaga and Palma, plus Amsterdam and Dublin links.
And Jon Leaman, finance director at Cardiff airport, is optimistic that the Toronto link will prove “a turning point” rather than a last throw of the dice. He told me: “As part of the recovery journey, this new route is definitely part of the strategy. To Toronto, our catchment area actually takes into account the Southwest, West Country, south of the Midlands.”
Yes, because of the absence of direct flights to Canada from Birmingham and Bristol, the obvious route from the Cotswolds to Canada is via Cardiff.
“Our catchment area for this sort of route will actually define us a little bit better,” says Mr Leaman. “We can serve more of the population than if we just focus purely on short haul.
“We’re looking at hubs, so we want to get back to the Middle East, we want to get to Frankfurt, we want to get to Paris.”
Last word to aviation analyst Sean Moulton: “Links between the UK and Canada have reduced over the last 10 years due to changing demographics, but 2025 is seeing a resurgence with Air Transat launching Gatwick to Ottawa, and WestJet launching Toronto from both Cardiff and Glasgow.
“Whilst Cardiff is small, there is ‘visiting friends and relatives’ traffic which the route will attract. Whether the link can be sustained long term, however, only time will tell.”
