It would seem the domestic routes do not work well from Southend.
Clearly the principal reason why EDI and BFS have failed is owing to a lack of early morning / late night rail services rather than insufficient demand. This is something which the airport needs to urgently resolve. I have no doubt attempts have been made, yet already it is having an adverse impact on the success of easyJet's services from SEN. Naturally the holiday routes are less dependent on rail connectivity, hence why early morning departure / late night arrival times have not precluded their success.
EasyJet is probably going to attract little more than very local predominantly outbound leisure passengers going on popular sun, ski or city break holidays.
Why?
If the profile of routes matches this, why is this necessarily a problem? As long as there are adequate connections to London, I see absolutely no reason why a small, easy to transit through airport will not be appealing for inbound passengers and passengers from the wider London area. From the airport own surverys, 30% of the passengers originated from London in 2012. Anecdotally the AMS service has a considerable customer base of Netherlands originating passengers.
I believe that within time EasyJet's growth at Southend will stagnate.
Well that's a given! Clearly Southend will only ever be a regional airport, the potential for growth is limited. For the time being however, Southend has a useful purpose for easyJet. A lack of direct competition from Ryanair is a very strong reason to transfer routes across. Both ALC and BCN performed well from SEN in 2012 when they were operated by easyJet from STN too. Surely the initial success of these routes was a pre-requisite for the complete transfer of these routes?