{"id":407813,"date":"2025-09-08T12:39:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T12:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/407813\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T12:39:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T12:39:10","slug":"as-bristol-and-cardiff-airports-tussle-is-it-time-for-the-far-fetched-severnside-air-transport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/407813\/","title":{"rendered":"As Bristol and Cardiff airports tussle, is it time for the \u2018far-fetched\u2019 Severnside? | Air transport"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a bold, ambitious and controversial idea: close Cardiff<\/a> and Bristol airports and build an international facility on an artificial island. So aspirational, in fact, that the Severnside plan was roundly rejected as far-fetched when it was unveiled more than 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

But now, as a result of the climate crisis and a long-running legal battle between the two airports, the proposal may not seem nearly as bizarre.<\/p>\n

Bristol airport announced this summer it was launching legal action against the Welsh government, which owns Cardiff airport, over a \u00a3205m subsidy package to be delivered over the next decade.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Bristol airport said it welcomed competition, but \u201con a level playing field to avoid market distortions\u201d. The case, which is expected to be heard by the competition appeal tribunal in early 2026, argues the funding would exceed Cardiff airport\u2019s annual turnover year on year, and that \u201cno other airport in the UK has ever received anything close to this level of public subsidy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bristol airport said in an open letter that it had repeatedly asked for meetings over the issue but the Welsh government had failed to \u201cengage meaningfully with us and other stakeholders\u201d.<\/p>\n

Cardiff airport referred the Guardian\u2019s questions to the Welsh government, which declined to comment, citing the ongoing court action.<\/p>\n

The feud has simmered since 2013, when the Welsh government stepped in to buy Cardiff airport for \u00a352m, well above the market value, when passenger numbers slumped after the withdrawal of budget airline Bmibaby two years earlier.<\/p>\n

It was an unusual move in the UK, where almost all airports are privately owned, but the Welsh government saw strategic value in the capital city having its own airport. The purchase was also viewed as important for future economic growth.<\/p>\n

So far, however, the airport has been unable to turn a profit, and passenger numbers have not recovered from the Covid pandemic: 881,000 customers passed through the terminal in 2024, compared with a peak of 2 million in 2007.<\/p>\n

Cardiff airport has already received close to \u00a3200m in bailouts since nationalisation. Its fortunes were expected to change in 2017, when Qatar Airways announced it would begin daily long-haul flights from Cardiff to Doha, but the route was cancelled in 2020 and has not restarted.<\/p>\n

In another bad omen, the airport\u2019s chief executive, Spencer Birns, quit in March, a month before the new \u00a3205m subsidy package was announced.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike many UK airports, Cardiff was formerly an RAF base, so it\u2019s always been in the wrong place for commercial use,\u201d said Mark Barry, a professor at Cardiff University. \u201cBristol\u2019s catchment area is much bigger and much wealthier, airlines are always going to prefer it. No one in their right mind would buy Cardiff airport.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat said, there are lots of other arguments for it \u2013 jobs in the area, strategic value. Rail and bus travel in Wales is subsidised to the tune of about \u00a3400m a year, so taxpayer money spent on the airport is not massive, looked at that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bristol airport bills itself as a major employer injecting about \u00a32bn into the economies of south-west England and south Wales . It has 127 destinations compared with Cardiff\u2019s 34, and dozens more flights a day. Around one in five of the 8.6 million passengers who used Bristol airport last year travelled to or from south Wales.<\/p>\n

Construction work to expand and improve the terminal is ongoing. Bristol airport is also planning to increase its passenger cap from 12 to 15 million a year by the late 2030s in an attempt to stop customers from travelling to London \u2013 a proposal that has attracted fierce criticism from the Green party, which leads Bristol city council.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the teeth of a worsening climate emergency, it\u2019s frankly staggering that Bristol airport is yet again planning to expand,\u201d councillor Emma Edwards said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last thing our city and the region needs is yet more carbon emissions from flights, more traffic congestion, more noise and worsening air quality.\u201d<\/p>\n

A UK government white paper in 2003 examining the next 30 years of air travel proposed closing Cardiff and Bristol, and the construction of a Severnside facility. Using an artificial island runway in the Bristol channel, it would serve both catchment areas.<\/p>\n

In a ranking of the UK\u2019s bigger airports last month by the Daily Telegraph, both Bristol and Cardiff fared badly, losing many points because they lack train connections. Bristol came in at 27th and Cardiff plum last at 30th.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bigger question here is short-haul flights in general and whether we should be expanding them, or encouraging people to take them,\u201d Barry said. \u201cThis part of the UK simply doesn\u2019t need two airports.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a bold, ambitious and controversial idea: close Cardiff and Bristol airports and build an international facility…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-407813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115168724599449993","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}