Last week I did promise to offer my observations of visiting SEN for the first time since RYR commenced ops there.
Towards the middle of the day the check-in hall was busy but flowing well with a high volume of hold baggage evident - understandable at the start of the peak holiday period. The new Costa and W H Smith outlets landside are good additions and both were busy. There was no queue to Security, just a steady flow up the elevators and along the walkway with no bottlenecks evident. Very few people were making use of the large lawned area in front of the terminal despite (or maybe because of) the very hot weather. The incoming trains were offloading large numbers and the Long Stay 3 (free 15 minutes) drop-off was well used as was the Short Stay (£3 for 10 minutes) drop-off. Signage for dropped pax exiting the Long Stay drop-off could be better and I mentioned this to management. All in all everything was running smoothly but that might not reflect how it is at 05:00 of course. I watched the RYR CFU departure and it looked to me it used max thrust (rotation looked a little earlier than usual) rather than flex as, apparently, is normal for RYR at SEN. Temperature was around 31C at the time with a 5kt headwind component.
There is now a train ticket machine facing you as the come out of the Customs hall but that is poorly sited as meet-and-greeters tend to obscure it. Most I'm sure walk to the station and buy their tickets there, although I always pre-book.
All in all things looked good but this was just a snapshot at a fairly quiet time of day; perhaps 6 departures and 6 arrivals within a 2 hour period.
I don't intend this as a 'how wonderful SEN is' review at all; just what I saw at the time.
P.S. There had been a drone scare a little while before I arrived and the airfield was closed for 30 minutes but no diversions were needed; just some holding overhead.