Originally Posted by
LTNman
For many reasons despite the Stobart investment, a good passenger experience and a convenient station the airport is going to struggle big time when there is capacity at London’s other airports. It is the furthest away from Central London (but only by a mile compared with Stansted) has the longest travel time and doesn’t have a direct link to the UK motorway network. Southend will flourish again but only when the other airports run out of slots and when airlines feel they have a need for SEN due to a lack of alternatives.
I believe you are correct in that assessment.
It was certainly the case pre-COVID that SEN benefitted from the paucity of LON slots so they will suffer from that not being the case in the next few years. Of course SEN will not be entirely constrained by that because it's natural catchment for flights to the Med and other European beach destinations is large enough that it should remain theoretically attractive to the likes of RYR and EZY. It's more a case for both those carriers as to whether they would rather concentrate the reduced number of travellers (which may continue for some time) onto flights from their respective hubs of STN and LTN. On the other hand they may think that offering a more local departure point will help in their maximising a smaller overall market. Predicting what is likely to happen is simply impossible and will remain so for many months by the look of it.
What can be said with some certainty is that SEN is unlikely to again see 2 mppa for a couple of years and the much touted 5 mppa can only remain a distant aspiration.