The Welsh Government will give Cardiff Airport another £6.6m to pay for new 3D airport scanners. The scanners will enable passengers to leave laptops and liquids in their carry-on baggage.

Under new rules, all UK airports which carried more than a million passengers per year in 2019 will have to replace their existing scanners with new ones by June 2024. Last year, Cardiff Airport had 910,000 passengers but did carry more than a million pre-pandemic..

Without these scanners, Cardiff Airport would have to terminate commercial passenger operations by June 2024. For the latest politics news in Wales sign up to our newsletter here.

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So far this year, passenger numbers are at 58% of pre-pandemic levels this year with 28 of the 52 of the historic routes back up and running. The hope is that the new scanners will speed up people going through security.

The Welsh Government, which has made the announcement, said: "As experienced by many other airports across the UK, the cost of installing the scanners at Cardiff Airport has escalated significantly from initial estimates. This is partly due to inflation but also due to the complexity of installing the equipment in a 1970’s era building; a process which has required the safe removal of asbestos in a live operational environment."

The statement adds: "Whilst aviation security is a reserved matter for the UK Government, it has consistently refused to provide any financial support for the respective UK airports to make the transition to NGS to meet the new legislated deadlines, despite the ongoing inflationary pressures on the industry.

"Consequently, the Welsh Government, as the sole investor in the airport, has determined that on a commercial basis it should provide an equity investment of £6.6m to the airport, as a one-off measure to address the cost challenges and meet this compulsory regulatory requirement. This will ensure that passenger security and safety at Cardiff is equivalent to that at other regulated airports across the UK, and will protect the Welsh Government’s investment in the airport for the longer term.

The Welsh Government bought the airport for £52m in 2013. In March 2021, it was given a grant of £42.1m and £42.6m of debt was written off. Cardiff Airport was one of the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic after an 93% drop in passenger numbers, figures by the Civil Aviation Authority in 2021 showed. In 2021, the value of the airport was put at £15m, less than a third of what the Welsh Government paid for it eight years previously. In 2010, Cardiff was the 20th biggest airport in the UK by passenger volume. By 2021, it had fallen to 25th. It had recovered to 20th in October last year. But WizzAir then withdrew.

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