Latest news from Southends Echo.


http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/1584...bers_jump_25_/

Did SEN never reach a million in its "golden era" of the sixties?

No if I remember correctly it peaked at about 700,000 in '67/'68.

IGAvion to open a route to Chateauroux in central France from late April 2018

I imagine they will be focussing heavily on people living near Chateauroux who fancy a trip to London, those with second homes and the VFR sector. It's a rather rural area with limited inbound tourism demand

FlyKiss' route from Luton to Clermont-Ferrand does rather come to mind on this occasion though

In 1967 692,686 passengers used Southend. In the same year 412,938 used Luton, 13,629 used Stansted, 1,954,272 used Gatwick and 12,433,542 used Heathrow. Outside London only Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast exceeded Sothend's passenger total in 1967 making Southend the UK's sixth busiest airport.

The Chateauroux (CHR) to Southend route will be operated twice weekly using Skytaxi Saab 340 equipment commencing 29th April 2018. Other destinations being served by the CHR based aircraft will be Lyon and Toulouse which commence at the end of March. It seems that Chateauroux-Centre airport are offering 'marketing support' to the operation. Fares from 49Euros one-way are mentioned but flights are not yet bookable on the 'airline's' website igavion.fr .

Later in the summer flights to Biarritz, Nice and Ajaccio will be added from CHR.

A rather minor comment but IGAvion have been 'flying' from Chateauroux to Nice since summer 2015. Ever since 2014 they have specialised in taking residents of rural areas in France (eg Angers, Chateauroux or Epinal) far from large airports to French beach towns. They used to fly from Dole as well - until the airport subsidy stopped.

I recall as a boy reading the Eagle magazine at that time. I clearly remember a reader's letter from an ambitious young chap called Glyn Jones who boldly predicted a bright future for Southend Airport, with passenger numbers rising to 2.5 million by 1970.

It seems that IGavion is at least a proper airline as it has been the trading name for the scheduled operations of Skytaxi since 2013. Skytaxi themselves have been operating since 2000.

Congestion charge could be introduced for A127 in Basildon | Echo

That will go down well with Southend's passengers

Yes, operates a couple of Saab 340s. Would be an interesting addition to the SEN scene but hardly noticeable in terms of passenger numbers I suspect.

Not unless they go by train, which is what everyone thinks they do, the way they rabbit on about it, (sensing a few smug faces as they choo choo by)

SEN needs everything they can get I think! Good luck for the new route.

Seeing the latest figures prompted me to go into my archives and I've come up with the 1958 statistics, courtesy of Ian Allen ABC British Airports, 1959 edition.

Total aircraft movements through SEN amounted to 61,659, bettered only by LAP (as it was known then) at 129497, and Croydon at 64,656.

Air Transport Movements totaled 19,519 and was beaten by LAP 117,295, Manchester 26,722, Lydd (Ferryfield) 24,371 and only just by Glasgow (Renfrew) at 19,563.

Passengers passing through SEN in 1958 totaled 183,230, which placed us tenth, behind LAP, Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast (Nutts Corner), Lydd, Prestwick, Blackbushe, Gatwick and the Isle of Man.

Freight handled was 23,397.6 short tons, which placed SEN third in the country behind Lydd on 71,231.7 tons and LAP on 55,404.2 tons.

Interestingly, Luton is shown as having only 10 (yes 10) ATMs in the year with no passengers and Stansted 556 ATMs and 20,003 passengers.

How times have changed with the disappearance of many of the former historically great airports and the emergence of new ones but SEN has survived and hopefully will grow and continue to prosper in the future.

Good news today about the new operator and route, perhaps this will be the little snowball that starts the avalanche!

By my crude calculations, if Southend had managed to keep the same share of London passengers as it had in 1967, it would be handling around 7 million p.a. today. But given that only 10 years ago it seemed doomed, it's still quite remarkable that this year could see a doubling of that 1967 peak.

Thanks all for the interesting stats on passenger numbers.

As Southender points out, Luton had only 10 ATMs in 1958, but in those days it only had grass runways, the current runway was opened in 1960.

More competition for Southend as a new direct Thameslink rail service starts this year from Rainham that will terminate at Luton.

That's Rainham Kent, not the Essex one.

I think that Network Rail and Abellio Greater Anglia should hang their heads in shame over the truly pathetic - never ending - "Route Improvement" work on the Southend Vic line. It really is a total embarrassment. Just how many YEARS has it been going on now? We currently have NO proper service Mon - Thur evenings and - weekends? - do not even talk about it.

Is the new 24 hour light rail link to Luton Airport still due to open in 2020?

I wondered how it was routed. Thank you clever man:ok:

2021. The enabling work has been taking place for a few months now so it should be being started soon.