Indeed, ljm104.
I managed to get out to BRS this morning and went to the area of Winters Lane at the western end of the field where the spotters gather. There were about 40-50 cars, far more than normal for a weekday morning, with groups of aficionados with cameras. G-TUIB came in from the west and performed two overhead passes before going off to the east then returning shortly afterwards to land on runway 27 more or less on time at 1110.
It used the full length parallel taxiway to reach its stand on the western apron. So any doubts about this taxiway for this type of aircraft seem to have been removed. The airport master plan spoke of the necessity of a turning circle.
Like you I'm not sure that Cancun will be non-stop - I've not read anywhere today that it will be or won't. Florida was non-stop in the last few years of the previous service with 767s. If not, as my alter ego said elsewhere, the economic dynamic of using BRS must be considerable as presumably the CWL runway could allow non-stop operations.
The local news media coverage was low key. It wasn't even mentioned on the main BBC 30-minute early evening local news bulletin. Its local ITV competitor did better with shots of the aircraft landing and an interview with a Thomson representative and the BRS CEO. Inevitably (why does tv always seem to do this?) the world's foremost aviation guru (as seems the case with tv companies), one Simon Calder, was given due reverence in a 'down the line' interview.
To say he was negative about the service and BRS is understating it. He began by telling his audience that the likes of East Midlands and Glasgow have had similar services for a while and Bristol was only playing 'catch-up'. Anyway they are only leisure routes and Bristol could not hope to 'join the big boys' until it got its NYC route back and one to the ME or Turkey for the onward connections in those areas.
He emphasised that BRS is a short haul airport with the obvious but unstated implication that this is all it could really hope to be.
He felt that BRS was not growing as fast as some competitor airports (without saying what these were). Given that BRS has grown its passenger numbers every year since 2010, and is the only top 10 UK airport to have done so, it's a job to take him seriously.
What this will do is show airlines that a 787 can operate from BRS and might be a huge factor in tempting someone like Qatar.
My alter ego suggested elsewhere that today's news might have a bearing if APD is devolved to Wales. Thomson can’t know the government’s intentions so they must have decided that if the tax is devolved they can live with a more favourable APD regime in Wales or they can’t and will switch the flights to CWL in a year or two.
If the latter were to occur it would give the BRS owners primary evidence that the more favourable tax conditions had caused market distortion and affected competition and might be significant if they decided to challenge APD devolution in the European Court of Justice. That’s assuming the UK doesn’t vote to leave the EU in which case the UK government could adopt, if it wished, a more imaginative method of mitigating the effects in England of APD devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as it would no longer be bound by EU competition rules or EU state aid rules which must meet the ‘Azores criteria’.
Addendum (2124 hours 19 April 2016)
It's a beautiful clear and still evening here in the Bristol area and I've just seen 'Alfie' (G-TUIB) overflying my house about seven miles to the east of BRS. I watched her lights climbing away to the north-east en route to Stansted, followed immediately by Wizz to Katowice and easyJet to Edinburgh.
