SOUTHEND 5

[Tagron]

The great circle distance SEN-TFS is 1611 nautical miles. It has been reported that the flights are undersold by ten seats, though whether this figure is a flat figure an average or a minimum or maximum has not been revealed. But taking it at its face value and using it as a template an increase of 10 pax using the same parameters as the EZY SEN-TFS implies a maximum full payload range of (very) roughly 1450 nms for a CFM-powered A320 from the SEN runway.

By comparison, the distances to the easyJet Turkish resort destinations are: Izmir 1366,Bodrum 1427, Dalaman 1488, Antalya 1548. I don’t know how easyJet do their schedule planning but generally it is common practice to use more favourable cruise winds for an eastbound sector than a sector to the south west such as TFS, so the fuel requirements may be better for the Turkish destinations for this reason.

The big question is over the runway performance. SEN-TFS is a winter operation, mid-September to end April. The Turkish resorts are a summer market. The comparison only works if similar take off conditions can be assumed. So to replicate the highest value of the winter schedule surface temperatures there would need to be an early morning departure, say 0700. Even then, we just don’t know the parameters easyJet use, and the early departure conditions on occasions could still be too limiting. Any risk of higher temperatures would quickly erode the payload/range performance.

By way of example the difference between the ISA+15 performance figures compared with those for ISA on a SEN-length runway represents a loss of a few hundred miles range or a fair number of pax. Interestingly the CFM56 A320 appears to offer better performance from short runways at low ambient temperatures compared with the IAE aircraft.

I was tempted to dismiss all this as more pprune-generated useless speculation, but the fact is there have been rumours a few months ago from a different source of a Turkish operation from SEN. I can well imagine that easyJet have evaluated the possibilities and perhaps that is all there is to it. We shall see.