Painful as it might seem, Blackpool turned itself around by expelling Jet 2 and other operators and then knocking down its terminal so it could focus on general aviation. In its last year of commercial operation the airport handled 223,372, a figure SEN would be glad to see today.
Southend will always have a future but it needs to focus on cutting overheads and expanding the successful parts of the business. While its fan base here will judge success on the number of passenger destinations and passenger flights the bean counters will be more interested in profits or losses. If those profits can only be achieved with no terminal operation then so be it. This won’t happen under Esken, but when the airport is sold the new owners will have a cold hard look at which parts of the airport make money, which parts has the highest overheads and whether they can see where Esken got it wrong.
Personally I would like to see SEN grab 20% of Luton’s passengers but that isn’t going to happen. I will put that down to location, location, location. Hemmed in by water on 2 sides, its distancing from London and no motorway network at its front door was always going to be a challenge despite its railway station.
The Esken strategy of Southend becoming successful as the airport of last choice has come unstuck yet that remains the strategy because that was the obvious business model with no plan B
Last edited by LTNman; 5th Dec 2022 at 07:26.