SOUTHEND 5
Join Date: May 2006
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Flybe are going to start flights to Newcastle from STN 3 times daily so no chance in that happening, people must remember it may be Stobart Air but they are operating under the Flybe brand, which means Flybe has a big say in what routes happen!!!
Join Date: Jul 2002
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how's about the crews and their lives in SEN who are now being told to relocate or leave?
I don't mean to spoil the line of conversation but is there much point in just picking out places that Stobart "could" fly to??
Stobart Air was never going to have a big impact on passenger numbers whether they fail or succeed. The truth might be dawning for a few here that airlines are not going to flock to Southend. One or two small players might come like Skywork but they will have a minimal effect on passenger numbers.
More than ever Southend need easyJet to succeed because that is the only source of major growth Southend will have but even Easyjet have found it tough while they establish where there is demand. As FRatSTN has stated the future seems to be in the summer holiday routes to the Med. Nothing wrong in that as who cares where passengers are traveling to but it will make for slack winters.
A top priority for the airport is to get the rail link to London improved to cover early and late flights. Latest figures show that 408,430 passengers for a 12 month period used the station which is amazingly high and running at around 40% of total airport passengers. I think Stansted is around 20-25%. What would that figure have been if passengers for the morning and late night wave could have used the train.
EZY tried the NEWCASTLE route a few years ago from STN using A319 was not very sucsesfull maybe a smaller turboprop might have better luck
Is there anything which formally obliges Stobart to run a Southend-Carlisle route, apart from a few red faces and the odd bad article in the local newspapers in Carlisle ?
Work has started on the Road Haulage infrastructure at CAX, with the runway work planned for next year - not seen anything yet on plans for improving the pax infrastructure.
FRAatSTN
Far from criticizing you, I think you make some good points and I agree that at present SEN is very leisure focused. Where we might differ is that I still think SEN has potential for more mixed market routes and AMS is a very good example of that. The growth on that route has been phenomenal and an A320 is often used nowadays even with three rotations daily; that cannot all be leisure traffic. Where EZY went wrong with EDI and BFS was in offering just one daily rotation when those routes clearly need double dailies at least; something that was never tried. The KRK route seemed to perform well and I don't think it was pulled for performance reasons.
I also agree with LTNman that the public transport connections to SEN are a major drag on its ability to serve a wider market. The complacency that the SEN management has shown to the train situation defies belief so one can feel little sympathy for them. Recently on a Monday I arrived by train at 11:45 and around 40 pax disembarked from that one train.
Getting back to Stobart Air, I wonder if they may choose to focus on growing the four remaining routes in 2015 and not adding any new speculative destinations at the moment. I believe that Liege was in the frame at one time and perhaps Paderborn might be a candidate but I will be surprised if anything new is announced for a while. As for Carlisle I cannot see the runway there being ready for reliable scheduled services this side of 2016 so that's something for a future decision as well.
Far from criticizing you, I think you make some good points and I agree that at present SEN is very leisure focused. Where we might differ is that I still think SEN has potential for more mixed market routes and AMS is a very good example of that. The growth on that route has been phenomenal and an A320 is often used nowadays even with three rotations daily; that cannot all be leisure traffic. Where EZY went wrong with EDI and BFS was in offering just one daily rotation when those routes clearly need double dailies at least; something that was never tried. The KRK route seemed to perform well and I don't think it was pulled for performance reasons.
I also agree with LTNman that the public transport connections to SEN are a major drag on its ability to serve a wider market. The complacency that the SEN management has shown to the train situation defies belief so one can feel little sympathy for them. Recently on a Monday I arrived by train at 11:45 and around 40 pax disembarked from that one train.
Getting back to Stobart Air, I wonder if they may choose to focus on growing the four remaining routes in 2015 and not adding any new speculative destinations at the moment. I believe that Liege was in the frame at one time and perhaps Paderborn might be a candidate but I will be surprised if anything new is announced for a while. As for Carlisle I cannot see the runway there being ready for reliable scheduled services this side of 2016 so that's something for a future decision as well.
Join Date: Nov 2006
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Expressflight, reading your comments on the BFS and EDI route; I think these routes were cut daily simply because the revenue did not stack up, mid week loads were not great and on BFS I can tell you that outside of Friday and Sunday did ok, but prices were always low it seemed. Going daily was at the time better to axing it . There were still double dailies on some days like Friday , and the business pax numbers clearly were not using which Easyjet measure on every booking.
Routes ex SEN to the island of Ireland have had mixed fortunes, dub hangs by a thread and it has codeshare to the US. In fact route from Ireland to the east side of England have never had much success, Norwich, Manston and even Humberdise ... Never stacked up.
Until Sen is firmly embedded in the mind of the travelling public as an airport for London, destinations routes like Edi and BFS will not succeed.
The piece of info / metric I'd be Mosf interested in knowing Is what % of the current pax originate at SEN and what % outside. I'd at a guess say 80/20 ....
Routes ex SEN to the island of Ireland have had mixed fortunes, dub hangs by a thread and it has codeshare to the US. In fact route from Ireland to the east side of England have never had much success, Norwich, Manston and even Humberdise ... Never stacked up.
Until Sen is firmly embedded in the mind of the travelling public as an airport for London, destinations routes like Edi and BFS will not succeed.
The piece of info / metric I'd be Mosf interested in knowing Is what % of the current pax originate at SEN and what % outside. I'd at a guess say 80/20 ....
EI-BUD
Thanks for correcting me on the fact that EZY did operate SEN-BFS as a double daily for a time.
I don't see how your guess can be correct that only 20% of outbound pax originate outside of the Southend area (which I assume is what you are saying is the case). If LTNman's figure of 408,00 using the train is correct then that percentage must be much higher surely. Also were there really 14,400 Southenders travelling between SEN and AMS last month?
I also would be very interested to see the figures for the origin of travellers using SEN but I doubt they are in the public domain. The only firm figures I have are for the nationalities of travellers on the CFR-SEN route in its first five months; 52% French, 34% UK and 14% other nationalities. I think those figures rather bury the idea that the SEN routes only attract outbound, local travellers.
Thanks for correcting me on the fact that EZY did operate SEN-BFS as a double daily for a time.
I don't see how your guess can be correct that only 20% of outbound pax originate outside of the Southend area (which I assume is what you are saying is the case). If LTNman's figure of 408,00 using the train is correct then that percentage must be much higher surely. Also were there really 14,400 Southenders travelling between SEN and AMS last month?
I also would be very interested to see the figures for the origin of travellers using SEN but I doubt they are in the public domain. The only firm figures I have are for the nationalities of travellers on the CFR-SEN route in its first five months; 52% French, 34% UK and 14% other nationalities. I think those figures rather bury the idea that the SEN routes only attract outbound, local travellers.
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Hi Expressflight,
Didn't mean to sound like I was correcting you!
No reference to 80/20, what I meant was of the total number of passengers who fly from SEN; do they originate in the UK or from airports served by SEN.
E.g taking the example of the successful AMS route; for every 100 passengers flying on this service; do they live in UK or Netherlands. My guess is that high proportion is UK.
Not very easy to measure and I guess EZY may not be quick to share such info. Some pax could get to UK via other airports and 1 way back from SEN so again a difficult measure to get.
Didn't mean to sound like I was correcting you!
No reference to 80/20, what I meant was of the total number of passengers who fly from SEN; do they originate in the UK or from airports served by SEN.
E.g taking the example of the successful AMS route; for every 100 passengers flying on this service; do they live in UK or Netherlands. My guess is that high proportion is UK.
Not very easy to measure and I guess EZY may not be quick to share such info. Some pax could get to UK via other airports and 1 way back from SEN so again a difficult measure to get.
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AMS is clearly a route that does well and there will be a mix of business and leisure, outbound and inbound on that route. To what extent I couldn't say.
However I do often think that the third daily flight is used as a bit of a slot sitter to fill the gap between schedules. It certainly looked that way in S14 when there were 4 aircraft. There are relatively few dates next summer with 3 AMS flights.
If you look at BCN, SXF, JER and VCE for example though, they fly 3 or 4 times a week, again not very sufficient for business travel. Look at the frequencies of those routes to LGW and to an extent LTN, they are the obvious choices for business travel. They are an alternative focussed on the outbound leisure market.
As for BFS and EDI, it's pointless saying oh well EZY didn't fly them frequently enough. EZY clearly doesn't see it economical to fly those routes two/three times daily with A319/20's or else they would have done so.
There's also little sense in people suggesting that BE take on those routes twice daily with ATR's. As has been explained here before, using smaller aircraft in a nut shell increases the cost per passenger, meaning the fares would be higher and in turn the demand would be lower. Therefore they would likely see the same issues, especially as such routes are already so competitive.
It isn't necessarily a bad thing being highly dominated by outbound leisure traffic. My local airport is EMA and it's a very similar story there. But it must surely restrict where EZY can feasibly fly in the future compared to their other LON bases, and as LTNman points out it can also result in more seasonality, which isn't such a good thing.
However I do often think that the third daily flight is used as a bit of a slot sitter to fill the gap between schedules. It certainly looked that way in S14 when there were 4 aircraft. There are relatively few dates next summer with 3 AMS flights.
If you look at BCN, SXF, JER and VCE for example though, they fly 3 or 4 times a week, again not very sufficient for business travel. Look at the frequencies of those routes to LGW and to an extent LTN, they are the obvious choices for business travel. They are an alternative focussed on the outbound leisure market.
As for BFS and EDI, it's pointless saying oh well EZY didn't fly them frequently enough. EZY clearly doesn't see it economical to fly those routes two/three times daily with A319/20's or else they would have done so.
There's also little sense in people suggesting that BE take on those routes twice daily with ATR's. As has been explained here before, using smaller aircraft in a nut shell increases the cost per passenger, meaning the fares would be higher and in turn the demand would be lower. Therefore they would likely see the same issues, especially as such routes are already so competitive.
It isn't necessarily a bad thing being highly dominated by outbound leisure traffic. My local airport is EMA and it's a very similar story there. But it must surely restrict where EZY can feasibly fly in the future compared to their other LON bases, and as LTNman points out it can also result in more seasonality, which isn't such a good thing.
tayair6
Arrangements have actually been made for pax catching the 08:50 Sunday SEN-CFR flight for them to use the Fenchurch Street to Southend Central train which gets in at 07:36. A taxi meets them for the seven minute transfer to SEN. This is a CFR initiative and not something that SEN organised and it merely highlights the lack of concern that SEN seem to show for the status quo on the Liverpool Street line.
FRatSTN
You highlight the point that unless EZY base additional aircraft at SEN they stand little chance of maximising on the business travel market. As is the case at STN currently they seem disinclined to do this.
Arrangements have actually been made for pax catching the 08:50 Sunday SEN-CFR flight for them to use the Fenchurch Street to Southend Central train which gets in at 07:36. A taxi meets them for the seven minute transfer to SEN. This is a CFR initiative and not something that SEN organised and it merely highlights the lack of concern that SEN seem to show for the status quo on the Liverpool Street line.
FRatSTN
You highlight the point that unless EZY base additional aircraft at SEN they stand little chance of maximising on the business travel market. As is the case at STN currently they seem disinclined to do this.
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Apropos the Liverpool Street service, DfT consultation on the East Anglia franchise (that includes the SIA service) closes on March 16th.
https://www.gov.uk/government/consul...nger-franchise
https://www.gov.uk/government/consul...nger-franchise
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Tenerife flight is delay by 25 mins another delay to 13.45 delay again until 15.40 don't know what happen to this flight ? Technical problem ?
Last edited by tayair6; 20th Dec 2014 at 13:00.
Stobart removing one ATR 72 from SEN and suspending ANR and MST from 18 January?
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What this will allow for is better schedules for business pax especially since one ATR was always night stopping at ANR. Perhaps a small increase in frequencies on the other routes, particularly DUB? It's either that or they will be left with an aircraft sitting around doing nothing for hours each day.
It's quite possible that Stobart Air will add frequencies to the DUB route, in addition to the existing daily Flybe 'mainline' DUB-SEN-DUB rotation, when the S15 timetable in released shortly.
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A top priority for the airport is to get the rail link to London improved to cover early and late flights. Latest figures show that 408,430 passengers for a 12 month period used the station which is amazingly high and running at around 40% of total airport passengers. I think Stansted is around 20-25%. What would that figure have been if passengers for the morning and late night wave could have used the train.