Outside the morning departure peak, Southend has always seemed quite spacious to me - but maybe I've just got too used to 7:30 am Saturday departures at Stansted
Southend is likely to be competing for the passengers who either live in south Essex / east London and/or are highly price sensitive on ticket price. Many of the niche routes where SEN had a monopoly for London flights like Brest, Caen and Rodez have gone and are unlikely to return quickly. Providing plenty of space has never been a priority at Luton or Stansted. Even City airport can be fairly cramped.
Southend in 2019 (ie when times were good) was struggling a bit financially. Airport expansion for LCC-dominated airports is usually left until the latest possible date when the airport is running over 100% of design capacity for big chunks of the day - thus ensuring maximum bang-for-buck and minimal investment risk. Terminal expansion might make airport managers dribble with excitement... but Southend needs to focus on packing-em-in, increasing retail spend within the terminal (yes, that includes includes creating more airside shop units) and coercing airlines to pay more in airport fees per pax. If anyone complains about Covid, SEN should be telling pax to wear gloves+masks. Maybe in 18 or 24 months, airport management can look again at major building work, but right now it should be purely bread-and-butter stuff
Last edited by davidjohnson6; 6th Jun 2020 at 22:07.