Wizz Air planning June start for Cardiff flights

The airline carried 40 million passengers in the financial year 2019-20

New international flights out of Cardiff are expected to start in June, an airline boss has said.

Wizz Air announced it was setting up a base at Cardiff Airport last December but was unable to start flights at Easter as it had hoped.

The first flight is planned for 17 June flying to Portugal.

Foreign travel is now permitted to a small number of countries including Portugal, but First Minister Mark Drakeford said it was "best avoided".

The changes to travel see countries classified into red, amber and green destinations depending on their Covid status, with only green - which currently include Portugal and Israel - allowing quarantine-free return to the UK.

Announcing the changes in line with England and Scotland, Mr Drakeford said: "It's my strong advice that this is the year to stay at home and enjoy all that Wales has to offer."

'Risk-based approach'

Wizz Air's managing director Owain Jones said new connections were needed for the "local economy" as well as holidays.

He told BBC Radio Wales: "We've had to plan in advance. We're recruiting new colleagues in Cardiff, and now looking ahead to that 17 June start.

"Yes, it's a limited number of destinations that people can fly to at the moment, but we urge the Welsh government and Westminster government to look at this on a risk-based approach.

"At the moment Portugal is the key market for us, and that actually will be the very first flight for us from Cardiff on 17 June.

"We do think that we need to get people flying; connectivity is important not just for people's holidays but also for the local economy. We need to get travel going."

Portugal's Algarve coast is covered by the green list of destinations

The company said it had been working "very closely" with the government to try to avoid a repeat of the situation last year which saw some last-minute changes to travel rules.

"We know that people need reassurance if they're going on holiday on the Saturday, that they wouldn't then find out when they landed in Spain that all of a sudden from midnight [it] was coming off the travel corridor," Mr Jones said.

"The traffic light system is certainly intended to provide more certainty."

Asked about the rise of the Indian variant of Covid which has been causing concern to governments over its spread in the UK, Mr Jones said the airline industry had been working closely with government to "provide the reassurance people want".

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Mr Jones said the company had not taken any financial aid from the Welsh government and was operating in Cardiff on a purely commercial basis.

However, he added: "We've grown.

"We're going to be 40% bigger in the UK than we were this time last summer, across Europe we've added 300 new routes, we've taken 17 brand new aircraft and opened 16 new bases across Europe."

The company is currently planning to operate nine routes across Europe and Egypt.