Cardiff Airport on a Qatar Airways return, passenger growth and financial health

Cardiff Airport remains confident of Qatar Airways resuming its direct scheduled route to Doha. And while a challenge it is keeping to a target of passenger numbers getting back to the pre-Covid level of 1.6 million a year by 2026.

On earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), in its last financial year to end March, 2023 the airport – which is wholly-owned by the Welsh Government – reduced losses on the previous year by just over £2m to £4.4m. After accounting for the release of £5.3m from a Covid recovery grant package from the Cardiff Bay administration, it posted an EBITDA loss of £863,000.

With the ending of Covid restrictions revenues were up from £10.6m to £18.5m. It posted pre-tax losses of £4.5m with net liabilities of £4.8m – the latter which includes the pre-tax loss.

With £42m in rescue and recovery grant backing from the Welsh Government – of which £33.7m has been drawn down with the remaining £8.9m by the end of 2024 – directors said they “have confidence in the continued support from its shareholders (Welsh Government) to meet its liabilities.”

Since being acquired by the Welsh Government in 2013 it has seen accumulative losses of nearly £61m.

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Having launched the first scheduled route from Cardiff to the Middle East, with a daily service to the hub airport of Hamad International in Doha in 2018, Qatar Airways suspended the service at the start of the pandemic in March 2020. It has since resumed all its UK routes, apart from Cardiff.

Chief executive of Cardiff Airport, Spencer Birns, said: “For Wales to have the Qatar Airways service back would be fantastic and reintroducing connectivity into the Middle East, south-east Asia and Australia where there is high demand and what a lot of people are asking for it. There is a commercial negotiation taking place between us. We are working with the airline on a resumption as soon as possible.”

The chief executive, citing reasons of confidentiality, wouldn’t be drawn on whether Qatar Airways’ request exceeds the original agreement. However, while the executive team has the freedom to negotiate a deal with the airline – with the airport operating via a commercial company at arm’s length of its owner, any agreement would still require ministerial sign off. And even if a deal was struck tomorrow, it would require a significant lead in time before the route was reactivated.

Mr Birns said: “When an airport negotiates with an airline, if it is a long haul carrier, they would typically look for a six month window of sales before their services start.”

If Qatar does return he said the aim would be four services a week in the winter and in the summer daily.

Pre-pandemic it used a Dreamliner aircraft with capacity for just over 250 passengers with 10 tonnes for freight. In the year from March 2019 to February 2020, the route handled 94,000 passengers.

Encouragingly for its UK originating passengers, some 18% were from England — a much higher contribution than for all flights from the airport (around 4%). Moreover, 25% of passengers who travelled specifically between Qatar and Wales were travelling for business purposes.

Finances an passenger growth

On the airport’s passenger financial performance (2022-23) Mr Birns said: “We had just over 900,000 passengers and were 58% recovered (to pre-Covid). In that period we managed to reduce our losses by around £2.1m (EBITDA) which was an important factor for us despite the cost of living crisis, higher inflation and energy costs going up, which was a good thing.

“If you look at the 2023 calendar year, bearing in mind in the 2022-23 financial year we had Wizz Air flying before they pulled out in September 2022, we finished at 841,000 passengers, which was 2% down on where we were in calendar year 2022.

“So, despite losing Wizz in the period, which was 13% of our capacity, the growth we locked in already materialised with some other carriers. If Wizz had stayed we would have been way up, but we were only down marginally despite them going. For the team I thought we did really well in managing that. In the year growth fundamentally came from a number of carriers including Ryanair, Vueling, Tui, KLM and Emerald, which operates the Aer Lingus service to Belfast.”

On passenger growth in 2024, the South African said: “It’s a little bit too early to say where we are likely to land up, but we know Ryanair are adding two routes with Tenerife and Alicante for the summer and we are in talks with them about what extra they could do for next winter.

“We also have extra capacity coming online on the Loganair route to Edinburgh with a larger aircraft which gives us extra capacity, while Tui is adding around 12,000 extra holidays out of Cardiff as well. We are not sure what else other routes are going to do this year at this stage, but anecdotally demand is outstripping supply and we are actively speaking to airlines about how quickly they could put more capacity on to meet that huge demand to fly.”

When pushed to give a figure he said: I think we are going to probably be short of a million in 2024, as we don’t have the capacity online yet. However, if we can convince more airlines to add more capacity later in the summer and early in the winter that will give us the boost we need that will get us close to it.”

Prior to the pandemic Cardiff had 52 routes and is currently at 28. Mr Birns said: “So, we have got a good number of the routes back up and running. The challenge we have is that the capacity on the high demand routes is not as much as we used to have. If you look at routes like Alicante. Malaga, Faro, Dublin and Edinburgh, they had much higher capacities in 2019.

“We are only just getting back to the stage now with Ryanair with Alicante where we have three aircraft for the summer and for Malaga as well. Majorca. Tenerife, Edinburgh and Faro are still way behind on our capacity needs. So, there is a big focus on those high demand routes on getting capacity back on, as well as getting the other routes back up.”

Asked it the airport, as part of its recovery plan supported by its owner, can still achieve the 2026 target of getting back to its 1.6 million pre-Covid passenger level, Mr Birns said: “It is certainly a big target for us to try and achieve, but we going hell for leather to get back up to 1.6 million by then.”

As part of its diversification strategy away from an over dependence of income generated from passengers through the terminal, the airport is looking to drive aviation training and maintenance, repair and overhaul investment, with significant land available for development.

It continues to talk to a range of airlines, as do other UK regional airports. This can at times seem like a fruitless exercise, but the chief executive’s mantra is that the airport has to keep on making its case.

He added: “The airlines we are trying to convince to do business with are still talking to us. With Qatar Airways we started talking to them back in 2006 and they launched the route in 2018. I have been talking to airlines for years and years and they may be saying no today, but they may well be saying yes tomorrow. So, it is important for us to be in the right space for a yes, taking it on, and helping to promote it.”

He added: “We are also promoting Wales as a marketplace to do business. We have four million people within a 60 mile drive of here. That is the active sales pitch that we are doing and we work very actively with the UK Government and the Welsh Government and their trade investment teams. In the round it is about convincing an airline, which nine times out ten is based overseas, to invest in our market. So, there is very much a FDI (foreign direct investment) dimension.”

Welsh Government financial support

As of September the Welsh Government had invested over £172.1m in the airport – not including the remaining, but yet to be drawn down £8.9m in grant support.

The Welsh Government’s equity investments total £67.9. This included the £52m acquisition from Abertis in 2013, which also saw a further £3.3m equity investment alongside it, another equity injection of £6m in 2018 and a further £6.6m last year to finance new e-security scanner technology required under new UK legislation. It has also provided loans of £69.8m -including accrued interest- of which £42.6m, was written off in May, 2021.

With accrued interest the debt currently stands at just over £31m. The airport is not liable to make interest and capital repayments on the debt until 2031 at a rate of 4% above whatever the Bank of England interest rate would be at the time. The debt, which is being monitored by the Development Bank of Wales, is liable for repayment by March, 2044.

The Welsh Tories claim a much higher figure of £200m. But whatever the amount – and while the remaining debt is still scheduled to be repaid – Cardiff Airport has received significant taxpayer support.

r Shadow Transport Minister Natasha Asghar, said: “Labour have sunk nearly £200m into Cardiff Airport. We were told Qatar Airways were coming back in December, yet here we are in February and there is no sign of flights to Doha.

“Diversification of the airport has to be the utmost priority for Labour’s Transport Minister, if more operators do not come on board Cardiff Airport’s losses will only grow.”

Theoretically, if the Welsh Government did close the airport it could recoup its investment via the sale of land. However, whilst loss-making the government’s return on investment assessment takes into account the wider impact that the airport has on the Welsh economy.

Mr Birns said the airport (which directly employs around 300), supports 2,400 jobs. There are around 40 companies located on its campus, including British Airways’ maintenance repair and overhaul facility that employs 700. A further 1,600 are supported around the St Athan airfield, which the airport operates.

The chief executive said:” So, there are 4,000 jobs in the Vale of Glamorgan off the back of the work we are providing and operational capability. That is a significant number of people employed in the area and Cardiff Airport alone is typically generating £240m of GVA (gross value added) to the Welsh economy annually, which is much higher if you include St Athan. He added that without an international airport Wales wouldn’t be able to host events like football’s Euros 2028.

The airport’s current net book value of £29m shouldn’t be taken as a guide to what it could be worth if sold in its entirety or partially to a private investor(s). Any price ultimately would be a negotiation between what the Welsh Government would be willing to sell for and what an investor would be willing to pay.

On the airport’s relationship with Welsh Government ministers Mr Birns:“We are now 11 years into Welsh Government ownership and we are on a far better footing going into those negotiations with airlines. In the last year alone, we have had a few meetings with airlines with two senior Welsh Government ministers in attendance. They are very happy to be supportive and ask us what they can do to help.”