OK this is winding me up now and it’s time to feed the trolls ...

Stansted has a bright future under new ownership; no one is going to invest billions in purchasing the asset unless they think they can provide a worthwhile return on their investment.

Stansted has a significant amount of real estate and underutilised facilities. There will be pressure to make a quick win to dilute Ryanair’sdominance, the easiest and largest available program is Wizz. The LTN crowd should not be under any illusions, Wizz don’t love LTN any more than Ryanair love Stansted. It’s all about the bottom line and Wizz will go to the location with the cheapest fees.
EL AL is a very conservative airline and it finally left Stansted after a concerted and long term courtship from Luton which I would assume included a financial offer that was difficult to refuse.

There is a market for European business flights outside Heathrow with both the City and Cambridge in easy travelling distance. Lufthansa have demonstrated that there is insufficent capacity for them at Heathrow by opening a Gatwick service (suspended for the winter) although this might have been a ruse to keep Frankfurt slots warm.

The BAA is largely the reason why Stansted has not done well and I would expect to see a wholesale clearout of management, once the sale has gone through, with the new owners bringing in their own people. Having a aggressive competitor is going to make it much more difficult for Luton and Southend. That said it’s not all going to go Stansted’s way any more than it’s all going to go Luton or Southend’s way.

Right I can get back to my Sunday now

There is no commercial viability to expanding Southend - absolutely not.

To be honest, not to sound like trolling, there is absolutely no point in Southend Airport.

That is an ever so slightly ignorant point of view. Why not take some pressure off Gatwick and allow passengers to use Southend? From London, the south of London and also from Essex and the Thames Estuary, it is often an abundantly convenient airport. If you believe that it serves no purpose then I would urge you to look at the number of people using it, ask yourself why they are using it (would they do so just to safe a fiver if the pain-in-the-arse factor was very large?) and then rethink the conclusion to your hypothesis.

Please, think before you type.

One of the reasons people are using SEN is that they have had their choice constrained i.e. they've got to. When EZY moved aircraft to SEN they also took the FAO route from STN. As of next year ALC is moving from STN to SEN. I've no doubt that SEN does have a market but there is a little bit of "engineering" going on to ensure that market.

A4

Go south or east from Southend and it isn't long before you hit salt water so it's catchemnt area is in 2 directions only.

A part time train service that is even slower than Stansted and 20 miles from the nearest motorway is not going to help the cause either but saying that getting through Southend's terminal is much quicker than most other airports but that will change as passenger numbers increase.

Always thought Stansted was a fine airport but the airlines seem to have issues with the place or it is issues with Ryanair?

LTNman

You really don't get it do you? Just proves how much you know (or not) about Stansted. In a nutshell, the reason why it's losing flights and passengers is because BAA massively overcharge airlines, blatently just to use Stansted as a fundraiser for Heathrow, hence the reason they spent so long fighting to keep an airport losing passengers! This extreme mismanagement makes Stansted an uncompetitive airport serving London and therefore airlines choose to fly elsewhere.

So all your previous posts simply saying that nobody wants to use Stansted is very wrong. If you had the slightest bit of understanding you'd realise that Stansted has a very bright future under the right ownership and has nothing to do with people or the airlines prefering Luton or Gatwick, it's just that they have arguably better management at the moment and after the Stansted sale, that could easily change!

I thought it was the other way round.

It seemed to be the case prior to 2007/8, but since then it's evidently been Stansted only existing to fund Heathrow!

The reason I say that, is because pretty much every route could be served at either Luton or Stansted, with no knock on effects for the passenger. There are no "new" routes, but just movement of aircraft from one place to another. I wonder how much Stobart's almost minimal fees persuaded McCall and Co?

2 million passengers a year is fairly worthless. London has too many airports already really.

Stansted is indeed a fine airport, but it is in a sparsely populated rural area. Southend has a population of over half a million within a 15 mile radius reaching out to Basildon and Rochford. Push that closer to a million once you reach Thurrock and Chelmsford. So one of the reasons for Southend Airport is to serve the needs of its immediate catchment and prevent them having to trail across Essex or around London. Another reason is to provide employment for a region whose employment opportunities have declined in recent years. A third is to provide a convenient gateway to London for foreign visitors, especially from the Netherlands, Germany and eastern Europe. A fourth is to make money for Stobart Group who have bravely invested in a time of recession.

The rail connection from SEN is only a few minutes longer than from Stansted and the speedy passage through the terminal makes up for that. This may change as the airport grows, but I can't see it growing much above 2.5 million pax a year anyway. It is no threat to any other London airport and is perfectly viable.

Aside from Ryanair and easyJet, there's hardly anyone to overcharge!
Given the white elephant terminal was built on the back of LHR profits, if what you claim is true, then that's par for the course.

I thought the reason why Stansted charges went up was because the airport was no longer allowed to receive money from Heathrow. This would also have stopped money passing the other way so your statement can not be true.

Think you are correct there but whoever buys the airport will be passing on the cost of the purchase to the airlines and their passengers so fees might not come down as you hope.

No, they most likely will not immediately but in time they may well do. BAA did say however that there would be instant cost savings and management costs would fall when they admitted Stansted could be run for £5 million cheaper per year after the sale so there is the potential for landing fees to come down.

The new manemgemt and increased competition for Stansted is enough stimulate interest and potential growth from airlines very quickly though by itself. Even for the low-cost carriers, the lowest landing fees is not everything. Whatever happens, Ryanair is committed to Stansted and the fact is, they will work very hard with the new owners and as they say "Stansted's managment can't get much worse" so things will be looking up in the next few months/years whichever way you look at it. I very much doubt a new ownership will make things even worse than they currently are!

And you think Ryanair don't have anything to do with it???
You try competing on any route that Ryanair currently flies or would fly to if you tried to muscle in! Who do you think might win that battle?
It will be very interesting to see if EZY finish off BA shorthaul at Gatwick now they have more than 50 Airbuses based there! BA just dropped Manchester which was one of their primary routes for instance, a route which they have served for years.

Quote: "EL AL is a very conservative airline and it finally left Stansted after a concerted and long term courtship from Luton which I would assume included a financial offer that was difficult to refuse."

This may have more to do with demographics rather than conservatism.

There is a large Jewish community in and around Hendon, many with links to Israel. It is much easier to access LTN from this area than STN (or LHR for that matter). Hendon-Luton is a few stops on the Thameslink and it's a few miles on the M1 motorway.




Several posters appear to be slagging off STN, but the point is that STN has a particular role as an airport handling mainly "no frills" (dominated by FR) and holiday specific or charter shorthaul leisure operations, with a healthy dose of cargo business. Longhaul operations have been tried, but have not been sucessful.

That said, it does "what it says on the tin", and cannot be criticised for it. However it is not an LHR substitute and never can (or will) be.

It is simple as that.


PS, suspect that it is highly unlikely that STN will land any direct routes to China.

Frank - digressing slightly, it's easier to reach STN from the Jewish areas of NW London than you might expect. National Express run a non-stop coach which originates in central London and runs from Golders Green to STN terminal every 15/20 mins during the day and every 30 mins at night. Coach takes about 55 mins from Golders Green to STN, while driving in a car takes about 45 mins.

Having said that, the fact that many of London's Jewish community live close to the train line between St Albans and West Hampstead does skew a Tel Aviv route in Luton's favour.

Quote: "Frank - digressing slightly, it's easier to reach STN from the Jewish areas of NW London than you might expect. National Express run a non-stop coach which originates in central London and runs from Golders Green to STN terminal every 15/20 mins during the day and every 30 mins at night. Coach takes about 55 mins from Golders Green to STN, while driving in a car takes about 45 mins."

Thanks for the info, sounds better than the links to LHR!

If Stansted is so poorly connected, why does it have the highest percentage use of public transport of any UK airport?

And if it's that bad a place, why is it the UK's forth busiest airport? And please don't tell me it's because RyanAir offer cheap fares because their prices have gone up and up over the last two years often being more expensive on comparison to alternatives from Gatwick. They no longer offer 1p, £5 or £10 each way flights and haven't for some time.

And can we please remember... Not everyone using a London airport resides under the arch at Marble Arch in central London and/or travels to or from this point by train.

I'm sure the 'Trolls' will have an answer to this? ;)

Ryanair actually only have about 12 million passengers per year at Stansted now, down from 15 million in 2007 so Ryanair is not really that likely to be a reason for holding Stansted back. If Ryanair were growing at Stansted whilst the total traffic at the airport was falling, then Ryanair would be the one to blame, but Ryanair is just as much as a victim as all those other airlines which have been ripped off at Stansted, it's just that their operation there is too big to move elsewhere.

In a way, airlines are better off than they were 5 years ago (when Stansted had a good range of different airlines) as Ryanair have less less now than they did then. So I suppose yes, I think Ryanair has not got that much to do with the Stansted declines. Stansted has proved it can have the large dominance of Ryanair and still offer a wide range of services from other carriers.

Quote: "If Stansted is so poorly connected, why does it have the highest percentage use of public transport of any UK airport?

And if it's that bad a place, why is it the UK's forth busiest airport? And please don't tell me it's because RyanAir offer cheap fares because their prices have gone up and up over the last two years often being more expensive on comparison to alternatives from Gatwick. They no longer offer 1p, £5 or £10 each way flights and haven't for some time.

And can we please remember... Not everyone using a London airport resides under the arch at Marble Arch in central London and/or travels to or from this point by train.

I'm sure the 'Trolls' will have an answer to this?"

Let's put this as simply as possible: there is nothing wrong with STN.

The point is that STN is not, and never, will be LHR. It will never become the UK's hub airport. It's a simple as that. Hope this helps.

PS Am not, never have been, and never will be a troll. It's just no fun!