That's odd as my loadings numbers show 190 pax in December at 10.6 per flight and 11.6 pax per flight for the four January flights.

Did Southend manage to keep its Biz Jet traffic when the restrictions at Luton ended?

Yes a few a day but nothing like what they had during the summer, suppose it will all kick in again once the Luton restrictions start again, then with the based RYR starting soon, will space become an issue?

Jet Centre has its own reserved parking bays.
III

If you look at the monthly "spotters reports" for SEN there is definitely an increase in bizjets using SEN

First B738 pax flight
 

Luxair B738 LX-LGU should be arriving SEN in the next 30 minutes operating a 'catch-up 'flight for LCY pax delayed by high winds earlier today. This will be the first B738 to carry pax into SEN, the two Luxair flights a couple of years ago arrived empty and operated out full to Pau. The two scheduled evening LUX-LCY-LUX flights have been combined onto the B738 into SEN.

SEN - LUX load was bussed from LCY and was 105 pax

Not sure how many came in on it from LUX

Earlier today a BA Cityflyer flight from Milan Linate diverted to Southend due to bad weather, and the return back to Milan also began in Southend (the aircraft spends Friday and Saturday night in Milan)
A single divert is pretty mundane, but what puzzles me is why a divert like this causes chaos. The E190 ended up landing at Southend just before 8 am. The pax for a 0940 departure fron LCY were checked in, luggage accepted at checkin desks, and only at the LCY gate just before gate-closing time were they told to then go collect their bags from arrivals, wait for a coach to take them to Southend and then end up departing SEN 4 hours after the original LCY departure time or 5h30 after the plane landed at SEN following bad weather

LCY-SEN is about 45 mins to drive. So why does a divert like this which should not be unexpected with winter weather take so long to resolve ? And no, the handling agents wouldn't say anything beyond the catch-all 'operational reasons' ! I don't mean to have a moan - more trying to understand why this all takes so long to be resolved, especially when SEN has ample spare airport capacity

If it wasn't planned, its having the staff availability to make the alternative arrangements in a short period of time and knowing of the availabilty of check-in staff / baggage handling agents at SEN being able to handle it at a certain point in time too. Whilst it seems passengers were informed of the arrangements "late in the day" at the gate - a number of other things will have been going off in the background. Perhaps one of them at some point will have been to continue the aircraft on to LCY should an improved weather window occur. Failing that, organising the onward transport can also take time and will have only been made when the decision to definitely operate the flight from SEN had taken place. There's no coaches just parked up idle at LCY waiting for such an event, so they have to be sourced and then will give an estimate of dispatch and journey time to get to LCY. Now, this is presuming it wasn't the only disrupted flight. If so, handling staff may have also been dealing with issues on any other disruptions and hold ups on delays too before being able to take on this disrupted flight. Another hold up before returning passengers on the flight back to the land-side area will have been to work with the airport on the best route to do this. Ensuring the luggage collection was ready - all whilst (presumably?) other operations were continuing at LCY including arriving flights using the baggage hall. That's all so far happened at LCY alone before even having to make a full new check-in at SEN, most probably under manual operating conditions (no BA check-in system) with most likely minimum staff due to having to protect their own flight schedules first and foremost. That's not even mentioning any crewing issues, flight planning changes etc. So perhaps 4 hours all in all isn't the worst.

As a note...

SWR A220 departed STN to ZRH...& as a further note over numerous SWR diverts in the past they have always appeared to depart back to Switzerland & not position to LCY later.
Swiss efficiency?

Luxair seem to share the same philosophy as Swiss in that their fairly frequent LCY diversions to SEN are turned round very quickly and depart empty to LUX. This actually benefits SEN operationally as it frees up stands for further diversions if needed.

Unless SEN were unable to handle the aircraft type? Whilst not knowing specifics, perhaps a towbar and subsequent self manoeuvre stand were unavailable?

If you are talking about Swiss they always choose STN as their LCY diversion airport. Nothing to do with SEN handling capability.

Passenger numbers for DECEMBER were just short of 1.1/2 million compaired to DEC 2017 ,That's pretty dam good...(PAX NUMBERS UP AIRCRAFT MOVEMENTS DOWN) more bums on seats on less planes

I think that is rolling year, not December

CAA Stats show 93 biz for December whereas 263 in June when LTN & STN night restictions would have been in place.

sorry I put the decimal point in the wrong place

If you're referring to the story in the Echo it was the one millionth Stobart Air passenger that SEN were celebrating; nothing to do with total pax numbers.

Total aircraft movements were 32,531 in 2018, up from 26,674 in 2017. Of those 17,089 were ATMs in 2018 compared with 12,158 in 2017..

Ryanair are adding 4x weekly Venice Treviso

https://corporate.ryanair.com/news/r...-improvements/

The Venice service will be a continuation for winter`19...

Considering it is the start of half-term the departure board is not looking particularly healthy unlike most other airports across the country.

Southend had 14 departures today according to Fr24. So not too bad for an airport of it's size. For comparison Cardiff had 16, Exeter 12, Doncaser 9 and Southampton 25.

It looks like 20 flights tomorrow which, to me, doesn't look too bad at all. Some people like their little moan, don't they?

Not moaning just reporting the facts. I would not put Exeter and Doncaster in the same division as Southend.

Been a while since I've been on this chat thread.
What's the latest update on the SEN rwy grooving work, progress against schedule, no glitches, ready on time for the new Ryanair services?

I would. All 3 are small regional airports under the 2 million passenger mark.

I have long memories of Luton hovering around 1.8 million passengers for years, now look at the place, as it is unrecognisable. The future can only be rosy for SEN.

Yes LTNman lets hope so but SEN could never reach anywhere near the PAX numbers of LTN, mainly because of the limited space of the airport to expand and the runway length, however if someone had suggested even a year ago that Ryanair would set up a base at SEN i would have never believed it. I think if all goes well during the next few years i feel a max capacity of 5 million PAX a year would be very good due to the airports restraints.

The resurfacing is 80% complete and then the grooving will be done. Approx one week ahead of schedule so all looks good. Thank you for asking.

Excellent news! Ryanair got a great deal from SEN and no doubt SEN will do very, very well from their new pals at Ryanair. I reckon long term car parks 2 and 3 are going to hit capacity now, may need consideration for a 3 or 5 storey car park on one of those existing footprints.

Fantastic job creating partnership for the immediate SEN catchment area. Brexit? what about it? the revenues will flow in at SEN, Brexit has no damaging impact. Onwards and upwards with confidence!

Titan A321 G-POWN came in this afternoon, empty I think. Parked up on stand 10. Anyone have any idea what it's here for? The Iceland flight doesn't go for another week yet!