London Southend is currently the fastest growing London airport and surpassed the one million passenger milestone in 2017
I just love how statistics can be manipulated to put the slant on any story. It is really great to see Southend on the rise but I can turn Southend into London's worst performing airport by looking at the same figures in another way.
Actual passenger 12 months growth figures from Feb 2017 to Feb 2018:
Heathow 2.1 million
Gatwick 1.93 million
Stansted 1.62 million
Luton 1.17 million
Southend 253,000
As can be seen Southend by a long way is still actually London's worst performing airport for year on year actual growth and only picked up around 25% of the extra passengers the next worst performing airport did. At the same time but starting from a low figure Southend is also the fastest growing London Airport. That title will remain until Oxford picks up a couple of extra passengers as at the moment that airport registers zero.
So today we celebrate the rise of Southend and rightly so but we all have to see the bigger picture than is being pumped out by the spin doctors.