With regard to business routes lets not forget that as Skywork found out, passengers did not follow them to Southend from City to make the new route work so it wasn't long before they returned back to City.
City Airport is unique, passengers fly into London City because that is where they want to go and they pay a high price for that convenience. While the experience of using Southend Airport can't be bettered once outside the airport it goes down hill rather fast.
The rail link is using slow commuter stock trains that stop at ever station. Even including first class rail tickets could not convince Skywork passengers that the trek was worth it and like other London airports to get to the likes of Canary Wharf involved a change of trains.
That is going to change though and it won't be doing Southend any favours. In a couple of years Crossrail opens, which brings some of Heathrow's terminals to just a 40 minute journey away from Canary Wharf and importantly with no changing trains using the latest state of the art rolling stock.
I see Southend's future not by trying to grab passengers from London City but from cost conscious passengers who are not too bothered what London Airport they use, which is what they are trying to do now but things will change. Has anyone noticed that on the Crossrail route map Southend Airport is mentioned twice as an onward travel destination? Once up and running Crossrail should make traveling to Southend a better option for more Londoners. Maybe then it will start to takeoff.
