Originally Posted by
marchino61
True, it's a bit of a stretch to call it London, but on the other hand, the train times into London are similar to Stansted - and if you are going to the Olympics at Stratford, Southend will be faster.
It is surely not part of any commercial development plan to base future traffic potential on a SINGLE two-week event, which is what the Olympics are
Likewise the train time to London. Southend supporters have made all sorts of equality comparisons with Stansted on this, but by the novel (to them) approach of actually looking at the train timetable, I get the following daytime figures. Stansted most are 46 minutes, Southend most are 53 minutes.
The first train out of London Liverpool Street is at 0528, arriving Southend airport station at 0632 (so that's 64 minutes). GIven check-in times of 40 minutes minimum, and allowing time from the station to the desk, you can't use that for any departure before at least 0735. Easy at most bases have dispatched their "first wave" of based departures by that time, so the train will not be a practical option for any of the early flights. The same applies in reverse for typical arrival times back of the last flights of the day.