There are a couple of points in the last few posts that I would like to comment on.
Pain in the R's
Your point about the lack of any adequate public transport links with London for early morning departures and late evening arrivals is well made. Quite why Stobart went to the trouble early this year of obtaining a licence to operate a coach service and then don't do so is beyond my comprehension. As far as the taxi fare to London is concerned £120 is correct for sole use of the taxi but Andrews operate a system whereby you can share a taxi and that can reduce the cost to as little as £25 per person. Not an ideal solution obviously but better than nothing. I'm not quite sure how would-be train travellers "sleep on the platforms overnight" as I understood the station to be securely closed overnight.
01475
Yes, AMS does work well from many other airports but SEN-AMS could probably achieve at least 25,000 ppm if easyJet had the capacity to increase frequencies to meet demand, which they don't have with a three-aircraft base. In the competitive LON market that is quite a success story.
chesna152
I agree that it is pointless making any comparisons with LTN and STN as SEN never has, and never will be, an operation of that size or anywhere near it. Had something come to fruition this year as hoped (and I'm not even going to hint at what it was) none of these criticisms of SEN would have been made so it certainly is the case that a new airline appearing on the scene would put SEN back on track.
LTNman
I'm not sure that certain routes commencing at SEN and then being terminated makes much of a negative impression on prospective operators. Elsewhere this happens; take Flybe at STN, LCY, SOU and BOH recently and easyJet at SEN have swapped destinations rather than withdrawing capacity and that is understandable as the base beds down. I'm sure that they could start serving additional destinations successfully if the decision was made to base additional aircraft at SEN.
What I find really disappointing is that the Stobart Air/Flybe operation seems to be stagnating and they don't seem to have the will to put in place sufficient capacity to expand the operation. A two-aircraft base with additional destinations such as 2 x daily DUB and EDI (which I think would work). plus a couple of weekend leisure destinations such as GCI, would dispel the current impression that even the airport's owner doesn't have much confidence in its route growth potential.