Bristol Airport is reported to be seeking permission from the Court of Appeal to challenge the ruling that cleared the Welsh Government‘s £205m support for Cardiff Airport.
The move would be the latest round in a long-running fight over public money — and it comes at the very moment the support appears to be paying off for its Welsh rival.
It follows a decision last week by the Competition Appeal Tribunal to refuse Bristol permission to take its case to the Court of Appeal, finding that none of its six arguments stood up to scrutiny.
The tribunal accused the airport of adopting a “kitchen sink” approach — throwing every available argument at the case.
According to reports, Bristol now intends to apply to the Court of Appeal directly for permission to bring the challenge, rather than through the tribunal.
The dispute centres on the Welsh Government’s decision, in April 2025, to award Cardiff Airport a grant of £205.2m, earmarked for airline route incentives, a new hangar village and improved passenger facilities.
The Welsh Government has owned Cardiff Airport since 2013.
Bristol, which lies 27 miles from Cardiff Airport as the crow flies but more than 60 miles by road, argues its commercial interests are harmed by the public money flowing to its neighbour.
The renewed challenge comes as Cardiff passed a million passengers in a year, with official figures naming it the UK’s second fastest-growing airport.
Passenger numbers at the airport jumped 24% in the first three months of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, and were up 14% across the full financial year.
Much of that growth has been credited to a new transatlantic route, with Canadian airline WestJet now flying direct between Cardiff and Toronto — the first direct link between Wales and Canada in almost 20 years.
The airport says it supports thousands of jobs across south Wales and contributes more than £200m a year to the Welsh economy.
Those are the kinds of figures at the heart of the Welsh Government’s case for backing the airport in the first place.
When Bristol took the Welsh Government to the tribunal earlier this year, it branded the subsidy unlawful, disproportionate and anti-competitive.
A central plank of its case was that the Welsh Government had failed to treat Cardiff as an “ailing or insolvent” enterprise, which would have triggered extra legal requirements before support could be given.
The tribunal rejected that, ruling it was not irrational for the Welsh Government to treat the airport as a going concern — pointing in part to an earlier award, worth up to £33m, made between December 2023 and July 2024.
It also found that the rules on rescuing or restructuring failing businesses did not apply, because the purpose of the subsidy was a policy objective rather than a bailout.
The Welsh Government’s win was the fourth time a public authority has successfully defended a subsidy control case under the 2022 Act, with none yet lost.
Not everyone is convinced the airport is in the clear. Andrew RT Davies, the Welsh Conservative Senedd member for the Vale of Glamorgan and Bridgend, welcomed the million-passenger milestone but warned the airport still needed to attract major carriers such as Qatar Airways to become profitable.
Whether the long-running saga is finally over now rests with the Court of Appeal, and whether it agrees to hear Bristol’s challenge at all.
