One problem is that so many airport and airline websites state that aircraft have ‘departed’ when all that means is they have left the stand. EZY OTP (on time performance) is based on when they push back from
Stand.
Always thought this was misleading as someone, not unreasonably, thinks the flight they are waiting for will be landing at the destination in xx minutes but it could well be still on ground at departure airport waiting for a slot time. Today the A320 did push back and then returned to stand but as Expessflight stated, even at that stage it was planned to go to Stansted.

That is correct, departure and arrival times are off/on-blocks and not airborne or landing.

At one operator I worked for the cabin crew got in to the habit of asking for the slot time which might have been 15 minutes after scheduled departure, the majority of them didn't understand the significance, they would think that the flight had a 15 minute delay so would drag their heels only to realise their mistake at the last minute.

A local airline where I am now, no sooner have the wheels touched the runway surface than the cabin crew are announcing that we have arrived X number of minutes ahead of schedule ... We're still in the middle of an airfield, we haven't arrived yet!

I think people underestimate the amount of business people, and the amount of money in the south Essex area. They also don’t realise that most of that business is domestic. .. ie in the U.K. . And man could be as successful as Amsterdam. Well on a much smaller scale.

Good for them! I'd love to know where the pax are travelling on to.

For years it has been predicted that modern communication technology would considerably reduce the need to travel to conduct business. Does anyone believe this is actually happening, or will have a significant impact on aviation in the future?

From an SEN pax perspective heading north on the early flight I followed a big chunk of the pax to the railway station to get to Piccadilly. Most if not all seemed to be on business. Heading back early evening the same day it was a bit busier, I’d say about half went towards the car park and half to the station. On both flights the majority of pax seemed to be travelling alone.

My return flight had a few of the same pax as on board as the outbound.

LCY diversions
 

Strange thing this morning. Two KLM E190s were listed on LCY arrivals board to divert to SEN. The first one landed SEN, whilst the second one having descended to 4000, then climbed to FL120 and diverted to Southampton. Later today, Skywork will operate their Berne flight into SEN at 1230, and Cityjet's Dublin service will also arrive/depart due to LCY hours.
(I see BA is training at LCY now with A318, but most pax flights are cancelled).

Apparently KL Ops instructed the second aircraft to change its diversion destination from SEN to SOU on discovering that there would be no coaches available at SEN to ferry the pax to LCY.

Edit: I think the 'no coaches available' comment related to the fact that Greater Anglia were not operating replacement buses to London due to road conditions. The apparently never ending engineering works meant that there were no trains running from Southend to Liverpool Street yesterday.

At 4,000' over SE England I doubt that it would have been in radio range of KL Ops AMS to communicate with!

Many a year ago, on a bad day, Aer Lingus at LHR had run out of coach suppliers, they swore blind to us that they couldn't get a coach, from my previous I just picked up the dog to 'Epsom Coaches' and they had as many coaches available as one would like.

If 'Epsom Coaches' are still in business and you need a coach in the London area then give them a call.

We have ACARS to communicate with ops departments these days.

Another article praising SEN as an alternative airport for London. This time from the Irish Independent re. the DUB to SEN service. Unfortunately the "best kept secret" part still rings true, but hopefully articles such as this will help to boost pax numbers:

https://tinyurl.com/ybfcud6w

A fast rail link to London just like SOU, only they also have coaches on standby for LCY diverts!;)

stewyb

I think you must have missed the edit that I added to my post two days ago. As you probably know Crossrail work means there are no trains at weekends at present on the Liverpool Street line and GA normally run a bus replacement service. Owing to the weather conditions even that service had been withdrawn that morning so KLM didn't want their pax arriving somewhere with no public transport connection to London. It doesn't seem to have been the lack of chartered coaches to take the pax back to LCY. SOU, on the other hand, probably had a rail service of sort sort running to London that day.

On the same subject the lack of weekend trains must be a drag on the attractiveness of SEN due to these seemingly never ending engineering works. SEN seem to have got so fed up with it that they are now running their own weekend buses between SEN and Thorpe Bay station on the C2C line and advising their pax to use this service instead of the GA line.

Talking of coaches, I wonder at what stage National Express or A N Other will consider relaunching a regular coach service to London. The early morning / late night service in 2016 didn't last long, but there must come a point when someone believes there's money to be made. I believe the existing coach service between Central Southend - SEN - Chelmsford - STN does well. Perhaps a SEN - LGW service calling at a few key locations along the way would work.

Just as an afterthought, the weekend and early evening shutdowns on the railway will never end unless something dramatic changes in how our railways are run. The train operating companies don't really give a damn, because if they had a choice they wouldn't even run services off peak.

Stobart air...Stobart rail ...why not Stobart coaches?

mikkie4

Stobart did actually apply for a coach licence to run such a service in 2016. Instead they contracted it out to Kings Ferry coaches which operated under the National Express brand for a couple of months.

I think the main reason why that coach service was so short lived was simply because very few people used it. Why? Because they didn't know it existed. It was difficult even to obtain details of the service at SEN itself: you had to ask at the Moneycorp kiosk and there was no signage. If they were to run a new service (which I very much doubt they will) it would need wide promotion to include emails from the airlines notifying affected passengers at the time of booking that such a service existed. If you don't put that information in front of your customers they're unlikely to find out about it and include it in their travel plans.It would need some joined-up thinking to be employed which doesn't always seem SEN's strong point.

It’s also fair to say that coach service ran at a weak time of year, when on many evenings there were no late arrivals or early departures anyway.

I have notice that Stobarts are very weak on their publicity side of things. Often their website isn't updated quickly, plus ground transportation, isn't advertised very much, espacially when the trains aren't running.

It would be interesting to know (via a survey) how many passengers arrive and depart LSA by train, car, taxi or bus. Often in the summer, there can be 5 flights inbound between 2300 and midnight, some of whom would be rushing through to catch the last train, or more interestingly, what do these people do when they miss the train.

Rumoured Flybe takeover
 

Interesting to see that the market has reacted negatively to the rumoured Flybe purchase by Stobart with approximately £100m being wiped of the value of the company before a 1,000,000 share company buy-back halted the price drop.

The weekend closures should end in April