Winning an industry-best award is great for senior management at the awards dinner party but otherwise pointless. Airlines and (even more so) passengers generally don't care whether you came first or middle-of-the-table when buying an air ticket. Southend is not trying to compete with Farnborough / Biggin Hill for the luxury experience. Acadaemia prizes the A* award, the rest of the world prefers the cheaper-to-achieve-but-good-enough B+
Even the airport which seems regularly to be ranked worst (yes, the one in/near Bedfordshire, I'm looking at you) is seeing huge growth in pax numbers over the last few years
It says to me that the terminal is likely to be significantly underused and (even with Ryanair coming), there should be a significant effort towards pulling in more airlines and routes.
Being able to go through a near-empty airport feels nice at the time but to a passenger an airport is simply a port facility. The people of London and East Anglia are best served when Southend is operating at 90% of capacity - it means high levels of connectivity to the rest of the world, boosts the local economy and leads to strong competition with other airports to ensure everyone involved in air transport is operating at the top of their game
Last edited by davidjohnson6; 30th Oct 2018 at 18:57.