As I have said before percentage growth or in this case percentage drops have little meaning when passengers totals are so low. Even with no new routes or additional based aircraft 2016 will see the negative numbers disappear which will be celebrated here by some people that the worst is now over.
Southend's October figure shows a yearly passenger figure of 930,549. The short term aim of the airport must be to add 1 million to that total. Forget the fact that this would be more than a 100% increase but just think of it as an extra 1 million passengers. It might seem like a tall order but it isn't. In Stansted's case it would be just a 5% gain for those that are obsessed by percentages.