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Just adding some detail to EF's post:
Airports UK (a division of British Airports International and part of BAA, as was) operated the airport from mid-80's to early 1990's and could not make any money except by extraction from SBC. They informed SBC they wanted out. Airport was under threat very real threat of closure in early nineties. Eventually a new operator, Regional Airports Limited, took the lease from the Council and in doing so saved the airport. After a few years, RAL persuaded SBC to sell off the retail park site to developers, whilst at the same time ring-fencing much of the money raised for the future possible re-development of the airport, to be released for such projects as the new railway station and control tower. As I recall, RAL made a (small) profit for every year of their tenure but one, by the very close control of expenditure in line with income; it was not without difficult times. However, thankfully it was recognised that in order to expand operations at the airport, that much capital injection would be required, at which stage RAL sold the airport lease to Stobart Group, leaving RAL with some cash to then develop their remaining airport at Biggin Hill. |
Point 1
The 'scale' strategy is a good strategy for an LCC airport close to London, but: it is hard to imagine where exactly those additional 2.5m pax are going to come from to reach 5m by 2022. For simplicity that would mean easyJet effectively doubling their based aircraft from 4 to 8. It would mean Ryanair basing 6 aircraft. And it would probably mean the addition of a few more foreign LCC's into the airport. An airport of that scale poses a significant threat to STN. Does everyone believe this is really possible? Surely more LCC's at yet another London airport is just diluting the entire system meaning less yield and less real income for SEN. The lower the fares go the less profitable each passenger becomes. The only reason an LCC would go to SEN is lack of slots elsewhere and lower airport fees. I doubt STN and LTN are at capacity yet are they? They make a killing from car-parking revenues which allows them to keep aeronautical revenues low. SEN doesn't have this ability as far as I can tell. Point 2 Regional carriers are a dying bread due to fare levels and fuel bills. Loganair and 'Connect' Airways would earn more dosh by consolidating at LCY where the air fares can be absorbed by the market. Those fares cannot be sustained at SEN. |
Red Four
Thanks for providing that interesting additional information. |
Originally Posted by LTNman
(Post 10487514)
The guy complained about the long check-in queue, which can happen at any airport but he claims to have joined another long queue to check his boarding pass 1 hour before departure. He then hit another queue to pass through security. Every time he mentioned his concerns to staff he is told him to carry on waiting in the queues as they offer no help. Now we are not talking about a Heathrow sized terminal at SEN so once passed security he would have been seconds from the gate yet up to 30 passengers also missed the same flight. All this in March before even Ryanair had launched. We will never know how many flight were departing around his flight time but it won’t be more than 3 I would have thought For it to be so busy it was probably a Friday which I think was about the only day all the based aircraft went out within a small window circa 06:30-07:30. It’s almost certain they weren’t on Flybe as if they were there wouldn’t be much of a check in queue so we can assume it was EZY. From travelling at that time I think the departures were something like 06:30 to Malaga or Alicante, 06:45 to Dublin, 07:00 to Malaga or Alicante, 07:15 to Amsterdam, 07:30 to Prague/Budapest? Then 07:45ish to Rennes and 08:00ish to Groningen. So if they turned up for the 06:30 at say 05:20 or maybe even later they would have found themselves at the back of a check-in queue at its peak with passengers that had turned up for three other flights at the right time, plus with other stragglers for their own. But they must have been at the front by 05:50 for the luggage to be accepted. At circa 05:45 it took me about 20 mins to get through card scan and security, about the longest I’ve ever waited. So I think the story of not getting through in one hour is wrong. Possibly they got in the queue at 05:55 and out the other side at 06:15 at which point they’ve said sorry we’ve closed. But that leaves some unaccounted time - toilet? shop? bar? Was it 30 pax turned away from their flight? Or 30 pax from all the flights? Or just 30 people waiting at the help desk paying off baggage fees etc for flights they were still in time to catch? |
Originally Posted by AirportPlanner1
(Post 10488434)
I call bulls*** on this story. I bet they turned up later than they suggest and/or 30 passengers didn’t in fact miss the same flight. For it to be so busy it was probably a Friday which I think was about the only day all the based aircraft went out within a small window circa 06:30-07:30. It’s almost certain they weren’t on Flybe as if they were there wouldn’t be much of a check in queue so we can assume it was EZY. From travelling at that time I think the departures were something like 06:30 to Malaga or Alicante, 06:45 to Dublin, 07:00 to Malaga or Alicante, 07:15 to Amsterdam, 07:30 to Prague/Budapest? Then 07:45ish to Rennes and 08:00ish to Groningen. So if they turned up for the 06:30 at say 05:20 or maybe even later they would have found themselves at the back of a check-in queue at its peak with passengers that had turned up for three other flights at the right time, plus with other stragglers for their own. But they must have been at the front by 05:50 for the luggage to be accepted. At circa 05:45 it took me about 20 mins to get through card scan and security, about the longest I’ve ever waited. So I think the story of not getting through in one hour is wrong. Possibly they got in the queue at 05:55 and out the other side at 06:15 at which point they’ve said sorry we’ve closed. But that leaves some unaccounted time - toilet? shop? bar? Was it 30 pax turned away from their flight? Or 30 pax from all the flights? Or just 30 people waiting at the help desk paying off baggage fees etc for flights they were still in time to catch? 1. It took me 20 minutes to clear security for a midday flight recently - the security hall had no more than 50 passengers in the queue. 2. An airport taxi driver told me that since the Ryanair flights started, the taxis are taking people every morning from SEN to LGW or STN due to missed flights at SEN - the overriding cause being the delays getting through security. According to the driver the pax are generally very unhappy at how they were treated at SEN. 3. The SEN website is now telling people to turn up at least 2 hours prior to departure. |
AirportPlanner1
The complainant said it was 6th March 2019 so it was a Wednesday, not a Friday and a very different level of activity to that which you fairly accurately estimated for a Friday. I thought it odd that he did not write his review until 20th May 2019 so I wonder if some other news story prompted him to submit it so long after the event. As he mentions pax missing their connection to Dubia that suggests they were flying SEN-AMS, but according to the EZY Winter 18/19 programme there was no Wednesday AMS flight until 15:25; a time when queues were very unlikely to exist surely. In fact the programme shows there should have been no EZY departures before 09:00 and only five departures for the whole day! As far as Flybe is concerned there should have been a DUB flight at 06:40 with a GRQ at 08:15 and a CGN at 08:20 and only another six flights during the rest of the day. In fact 6th March 2019 was an incredibly quiet day at SEN and it's very hard to believe that queues as depicted could actually exist on such a day. I also didn't know that Fast Track Security existed in early March as I thought it a recent 'innovation', but perhaps it was in place then. All in all an odd story to say the least. |
Originally Posted by Barling Magna
(Post 10488204)
What is the situation re. the Warners Bridge retail park? Is it owned by Stobart, or the Council, or somebody else.......? It could be useful additional car parking space....
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Originally Posted by Spanish eyes
(Post 10488512)
Yes pull down the buildings and put the people out of work for a car park that will employ no one. I can just see the council voting that one through.
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Originally Posted by Planespeaking
(Post 10488521)
Well that's a rather emotive and ill informed comment. If the retail park is moved to a new location just 1/2 a mile away in the new airport business park with better infrastructure and transport links, which has been proposed, where are the employees being put out of work? |
Originally Posted by Expressflight
(Post 10488504)
AirportPlanner1
The complainant said it was 6th March 2019 so it was a Wednesday, not a Friday and a very different level of activity to that which you fairly accurately estimated for a Friday. I thought it odd that he did not write his review until 20th May 2019 so I wonder if some other news story prompted him to submit it so long after the event. As he mentions pax missing their connection to Dubia that suggests they were flying SEN-AMS, but according to the EZY Winter 18/19 programme there was no Wednesday AMS flight until 15:25; a time when queues were very unlikely to exist surely. In fact the programme shows there should have been no EZY departures before 09:00 and only five departures for the whole day! As far as Flybe is concerned there should have been a DUB flight at 06:40 with a GRQ at 08:15 and a CGN at 08:20 and only another six flights during the rest of the day. In fact 6th March 2019 was an incredibly quiet day at SEN and it's very hard to believe that queues as depicted could actually exist on such a day. I also didn't know that Fast Track Security existed in early March as I thought it a recent 'innovation', but perhaps it was in place then. All in all an odd story to say the least. |
Originally Posted by asdf1234
(Post 10488651)
I think the trip was on 6th April as Skytrax verified the trip by reference to the complainants flight ticket and recorded the trip as having taken place in April. What was the schedule like for Saturday 6th April?
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Early and late trains
Good news. The early and late trains are now timetabled to start from next Monday, 10th June. |
Originally Posted by SARF
(Post 10487928)
Highly likely. Well 1 pound a share likely. Though to be fair they did pay a fat dividend for the last couple of years. Take that in cash rather than reinvest in shares then it’s not as bad .
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It was a payout for the sale of part of Eddie Stobart trucking. I guess the markets thought it would be permanent tho they did insinuate the dividends would continue till 2021? Either way it’s returning cash to shareholders and in my opinion better than share buybacks . The tinkler spat put and end to those golden days and perhaps some Nigel Woodford forced selling ? you would hope they are now investing more in the airport but only they know the returns thus far and what they can hope to,create |
Originally Posted by Expressflight
(Post 10488688)
Then why does the complainant say ".... caused lots of people to miss their flights on 6th March 2019"? Where does your date of 6th April come from?
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Is Nigel Woodford Neil’s lesser known brother? |
Yeah like Neil Farage |
Originally Posted by Expressflight
(Post 10488708)
Early and late trains
Good news. The early and late trains are now timetabled to start from next Monday, 10th June. |
The early morning train departs LST at 04:30 (04:35 some days) arriving SIA 05:17 (05:29 some days) calling at Stratford only. No Sunday morning train at present due to engineering works. The late evening train departs SIA at 23:59 arriving LST 00:55 calling at Shenfield and Stratford only. This service operates 7 days a week.
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Anyone seen how the loads are on the new Scottish services? |
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