FATHER Christmas has been in Rhoose holding crucial talks at Cardiff Airport, planning his route over the Barry skies to ensure children receive their gifts on time for Christmas morning.

Skies over the Vale of Glamorgan have been much busier this year with increased flights arriving to and departing out of Cardiff Airport. To plan ahead, Father Christmas held talks with Debra Barber, managing director at the airport, and also visited the air traffic control tower to coordinate the sleigh’s route.

Father Christmas, also known as Santa Claus, said: “The elves and I work very hard in the lead up to Christmas to ensure children will get their presents and I’d heard about all these new routes at Cardiff airport, so I needed to make sure Rudolph and the rest of the reindeers would be able to guide my sleigh safely on Christmas Eve.

“I met with the staff in Rhoose to talk about the traffic expected on my flight path and they were very accommodating. They even had a mince pie and a glass of milk waiting for me and some carrots for the reindeers.

"We’re currently working on a plan for a no fly zone on Christmas Eve. After all, I’ve never been late for a Christmas delivery and I don’t intend to start now.”

Ms Barber, managing director at the airport, said: “We held a very long meeting with Santa this week to talk about the exciting new developments at Cardiff airport this year.

"With 14 new Flybe routes, daily flights to Amsterdam with KLM, Vueling routes to Spain not to mention Ryanair and Thomson flights to the warmer climes of the Canaries means there will be lots more flights and busier skies. We knew these may cause him some tricky problems on Christmas Eve.

“Thankfully we spent a full day with Father Christmas and have come up with the perfect solution meaning his Christmas route will run to time. He even had time to meet some local children from St Nicholas Church in Wales primary school and some of the staff’s children too.”