I think there must be high chance of success for Shaun Browne to suggest the transatlantic route to New York will be back in Summer 2016.
In addition to this Thomson should be launching its Summer 2016 schedules in the next couple weeks, so could we be in for more transatlantic routes with the return of Sanford, Florida and Cancun, Mexico. Rumours of such a return were mentioned by a poster on the dried plum last month.
This would be a major coup for Bristol if this were the case and put a dent in the Welsh governments Long Haul plan for Cardiff.
It does seem very positive although I have a couple of reservations, namely:
On purely commercial grounds on a level playing field the BRS catchment would be well ahead of the CWL catchment for a transatlantic scheduled NYC service. However, as has been seen with the Flybe initiative at CWL the Wales Assembly Government appears to be ploughing in millions of the public money it earmarked for route development. Whether there will be enough to tempt a transatlantic scheduled carrier remains to be seen although I believe that the BRS management, whilst not becoming too ruffled about Flybe, would want to challenge anything they believed to be a government acting in breach in of EC regulations and competition issues if a transatlantic scheduled route was involved.
As for the TOM transatlantic charter routes the same applies as regards route funding but for BRS to get them back would mean that TOM is satisfied that the B 787 can operate out of BRS, something that has not been cleared up in probably thousands of words of debate in various aviation forums.
Finally, the spectre of APD still lingers. If Labour wins the election, and has to rely on the support of the Scottish Nationalists and Plaid Cymru to govern the UK, expect some
quid pro quo, part of which would almost certainly involve devolution of APD (perhaps just long haul initially) to the Wales Assembly Government who would be in the privileged position of an airport owner able to set its own APD rates. If that happened and no compensating mechanism was put in place for England or the English regions it would be an almost irresistible attraction for an airline or airlines to begin long haul at CWL, in which circumstances BRS would almost certainly suffer.
Ray - The very strong rumours I heard was that American was very close to agreeing a BRS-NYC route for this year. Whether they are now talking to American or have switched their emphasis to United (I'd be very surprised if they hadn't spoken to both for a service this year) is something that we will learn in due course
if a route is announced.
