Amsterdam works from everywhere, though! It even works from Teeside, and worked from Manston!

01475 - just to be pedantic, Amsterdam did not work from Cambridge - Darwin and Cityjet both tried the route in the last few years. However if Southend finds itself with passenger numbers similiar to Cambridge, there are likely far bigger problems to address.

It depends what you class as 'worked'. Manston for example was operating at under 50% load factor on a F70! However, KLM stated that it 'worked' due to the number of connecting passengers. This is what they said publicly at least, would have been interesting to see how the route faired long term! While I am honest about the many shortcomings of Southend, I think this is one case where the figures have suprised most people.

01475 - just to be pedantic, Amsterdam works from Teesside!

Agree your points through - SEN is a niche player, it'll take time to find its place in the market.

Agreed that just another 2 or 3 airbuses or 737's carrying good loads based at SEN would indeed turn the airport around and would probably be quicker to achieve than trying to attract around 9 non based airbuses or 737's into Southend each day.

But there lies the old problem again that with no public transport links to and from London for the first and last flights of the day. SEN based aircraft have a connectivity issue with the big smoke that all the other London airports don't have.

There are also quite a few horror story reviews appearing on the net about passengers having to sleep on the platforms overnight because the airport won't let passengers back into its closed terminal. Also complaints about £120 taxi fares to London for those that don't want to sleep at the station or spend a night in a hotel.

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.

You can't put an ATR operation up on high volume low fare routes such as these unless you have a very high percentage of local business (higher than average fare) pax comitted to the service - in which case you basically have a niche market.

It seems to me that Southends main weakness is not being able to take 737-800 ops (correct me if I am wrong) as that will be closing out so many potential operators.

737/800
 

I seem to remember 2 737/800 operated for the Rugby world cup on a French Charter? If so why can they not be used for every day service to simalar destinations I do not have the load factors for these flights.

Boeing 737-800
 

It seems that these aircraft can operate from SEN as we had a couple in during the rugby world cup. Didn't someone suggest that perhaps Ryanair couldn't operate from SEN due to down-rated engines on their 737-800 fleet? Perhaps my memory doesn't serve me correctly?

The 2 Luxair 737-800 flights carried 366 pax in total which is 183 per flight.

Rugby charters have little if any luggage carried onboard by the passengers and probably nothing in the hold - makes a big difference to range and viability of a route.

Don't know if this is still the case but Ryanair 737-800's used to have de-rated engines requiring a longer take off run. The minimum length was 6000ft or 1829m. I know someone is now going to list a number of Ryanair airports where that is not the case but even on the Stansted Blackpool service that I used to travel on a few rows of seats were always roped off.

I had a look at some Boeing figures when the two Luxair charters took place and I came up with a full pax payload maximum range with reserves of about 800 nm for aircraft without the de-rated engines. It looked as if LDR was a bit marginal for SEN's 1,604m LDA and probably a non-starter if the runway should be declared WET.

Maybe a 738 driver out there could compute more accurate figures for SEN's runway.

Edit: I'm sure Ryanair's aircraft could not operate commercially from SEN.

After doing a bit of Googling Ryanair use de-rated engines as it increases engine life and reduces maintenance costs. The cost is that the lower maximum thrust means a longer takeoff run I believe thus eliminating Southend.

SEN - Ryanair
 

Even more important is de-rated engines allow FR to declare lower MTOW's and so attract lower ATC and weight-related landing charges. Rules out SEN for most of their fleet too.

I knew I had read something about Ryanair and Southend - looks like other 737-800 operators might not be as restricted.

Do you think it will make a difference when airlines take delivery of the
new 737max or 320neo

Inbound charters are something SEN should try to attract more of. With passengers picked up and returned by coach they won't care which airport is used or what the public transport is like as they will just go where they are taken.

Biz jet traffic is another area that still appears to be ignored yet London is one of the Biz jet capitals of the world.

EZY Lyon first service
 

On Saturday Easyjet operated their first weekly flight to LYS. I was sad to hear 28 pax out/9 pax return. I am surprised they even bothered to operate it at such a loss, but credit to them. I hope future dates have better support.

There are some real bargains on that route at the moment. Next Saturday from £38, even on Boxing Day flights out are only £49.49. In January most of the flights are £25 each way. That's cheaper than me going to the Scottish Highlands

Tophat,

I wouldn't read into low numbers on the Lyon service, many similar destinations such as Geneva get quite low numbers in the run up to Christmas. Last year I was flying from Geneva and many flights leaving for Ireland and UK had as few as 30/40 passengers per flight...

I spoke to a senior SEN manager a couple of years ago urging them to market SEN to European charter brokers and he said it was on his list of 'things to do'. I wonder if it was ever carried out.

For about seven years I was an Air Charter Broker myself so knew that clients normally didn't have any interest in the arrival airport for any given city as long as it enabled them to reach their destination venue by onward surface transport.

If you're feeling generous with your time EF I'm sure it would be worth speaking to the new managers at SEN re. European charter brokers if your lines of communication are still open.

I used to sit on the passenger services sub committee at Luton where management would bring out their big guns. I was always amazed how little they seemed to know about the day to day aspects of the airport, its shortfalls, the way forward and how little if any influence I had in challenging policies and procedures.

I think Expressflight often shares my frustrations about SEN like I did about LTN.

SEN received eleven LCY diversions this morning. That certainly made the arrivals board look more respectable than it did last Tuesday.

November 2015 Provisional Stats
 

Passengers: 51,547 (-23%)
Rolling Year: 915,114 (-17.4%)

Must be due to bottom out soon. When did the 4th easyjet based aircraft go?

I see the train situation is looking a bit bleak over Christmas http://www.southendairport.com/getti...ed-rail-works/

Are there any figures on how many pax at SEN use the train?

520,734 passengers used the station in 2014/15 but how many of those were airport passengers is anyone's guess.

SEN airport station usage

2011/12 - 56,834 (station opened during the year)
2012/13 - 340,814
2013/14 - 408,430

Also hear that the Stobart/Flybe operations are back to an ATR72 (EI-REH) from tomorrow.

Just checked the slot availability for all of London's airports for July next year between 7:00 and 8:00
Gatwick 0
Heathrow 0
Stansted 0
Luton 0
City 2 in and 2 out
Southend 20 in and 20 out.

Maybe Southend's will be picking up some business soon as London is all but full between those hours so Southend is the only place to go now.

All is Lost
 

All, not said anything for ages. What's the point, I wonder if anyone actually has something in their job spec relating to attracting new business at SEN? I know someone who offered to help, don't need anybody was their response. Perhaps I must be missing something!

I am sure Southend's day will come if not next year maybe the year after. With slots now in short supply at all of London's other airports even if airlines might not have Southend at the top of their list of preferred airports they might well have no choice soon but to come to Southend if they want to serve London and can use Southend's shortish runway.

Neile1

All is not lost. Of course a number senior SEN personnel's job specifications include the task of working to attract new business to SEN, whether that be scheduled or charter airlines, business aviation or ancillary activities. The reality though is that you cannot just snap your fingers and conjure up business. Lead times of up to three years can be involved in airline planning processes and patience is necessary as I know from personal experience.

I would agree that in the past couple of years SEN has not had the most dynamic or consistent leadership in various areas but this seems to have been rectified and will hopefully now produce results sooner rather than later.

As far as offers of positive suggestions being rebuffed are concerned I certainly have not found this to be the case at any time. Obviously the way you make such suggestions needs to be in the right way, but positive ideas/alternative thinking have always received a fair hearing at SEN in my experience right up to now. Perhaps your acquaintance should try again as there have been recent senior management changes for the better, in my view.

Yes, my limited contacts with the new team have been very encouraging. Well worth your acquaintance trying again Neile1.

My best efforts at calculating load factors for the Stobart Air flights in November are:

CFR ... 50%
GRQ ... 67%
RNS ... 69%

Those figures seem about right for the STK routes.

The base is now back to an ATR72 base from today

EF and Barling.

I admire your positive attitude. But I cannot agree, the potential permanent loss of Adria and the exit of Skyworks are out of SEN's control. The mention of a three year window to set up is interesting but dubious. S16 new operators is essentially dead and buried. Even my "limited" experience says some tricks are being missed, perhaps the slot issue may reap some rewards. I dearly want SEN to succeed but I just can't see it happening.

Nellie

Your posts says to me you've never worked in airport development. As express flight says, it's a very long burn process and Southend is a 3rd tier London airport. Not only that, Southend isn't competing with London airports. It's competing across Europe.

An airline can chose where to base their aircraft and their choice isn't Southend or stansted, it's London or Liverpool, or Paris or Milan or Rome.

For Southend to win it has to be prove that the risk is worth it, and the risk is huge. The cost of operating 1 737 for a year is something like £10m - massive numbers.

Southend is doing well, yes it's in a period of consolidation but it will come out of it and grow. All new airports go trough the same.

I can see how it may appear frustrating that stansted or Luton get growth seemingly at the expense of Southend but you don't know how long Luton or stn have been working on these deals and it will have been years.

I now work for an airline and see the airline operation on a daily basis but prior I worked doing airport development and it's hard, very hard.

Be patient ...

Cumbrian

Thanks for making me laugh! My actual experience may surprise you.... I do actually have a great deal of experience in this field, so I do know when things are failing, and they are!