Re: No more night time bizjets at SEN
 

It took 6 months for the reason to become clear....

Listen and ignore comes to mind. No mention then of their plans to more than double flights in this statement? Can’t think why that would be. 40m from a live Taxiway is extraordinary close and makes London City seem rural with its housing locations.

This is not down to Stobart who are only following the rules but the council who set the rules. What I find stunning is that the council does not appear to get a cut from passenger fees seeing they own the asset. I wonder who led the original lease negotiations? Probably the same person who negotiated Brexit. If the council got passenger income they would be more likely to ignore the complaints and promote expansion which happens at my local airport. For airport expansion to go ahead I can see a complete night ban but would that be a bad thing if it meant more passengers from the airports supporters point of view?

LTNman

I think you will find that in every case where SEN has changed hands in recent decades it has just been a matter of assigning the Lease by the then Leaseholder to the new 'buyer', which Southend Council doesn't have the right to 'unreasonably' refuse under English leasehold law. There has been no opportunity for the Council to amend the Lease and they have only been able to introduce night movement restrictions etc. through the planning system. They are unable to impose a 'passenger fee' unless the Leaseholder were to agree an amendment to the Lease to that effect, so really the Council should not be blamed.

Presumably the leaseholder pays an annual fee to the Council? It wouldn't be in the Council's interests for the airport to stumble.

When Glyn Jones states that there are nine aircraft based at SEN that is not telling the whole truth is it. While that is the number of scheduled pax based aircraft, there are also the JOTA fleet of seven Bae146/RJ pax/cargo charter aircraft (not sure if they are all in service) and of course the two ASL 737-400F. Then we have the non based arrivals/departures of Loganair and Wizz Air as well. Maybe this post is not relevant to the above discussion but hey ho i thought i would post it anyway.

aurigny72

In fairness to Glyn he immediately went on to say "They launch in the first hour" so it was obvious he was referring to the scheduled pax operation.

I can understand what Glyn was saying and yes that is of course quite true but i still feel its misleading for some people to state that only nine aircraft are actually based here.

Wizzair to Sibiu

Not sure if this has been mentioned before but it looks like this route is returning to Luton from the beginning of the summer season(29/3) according to their website.
What have the loads been like?

The Southend route has only just started, a bit quick off the mark aren’t they?

I ma afraid it looks like Wizz will use SEN as LTN overflow- but given that Luton is hitting if not exceeding its planning limit that should still give SEN capacity unless loads/yields prove much worse.

Flyone's Chisinau service is resuming on Tuesdays from January 7th and moving to twice weekly in the summer.

Boris...
 

My spies tell me the PM just transited through SEN. Are my spies sipping the xmas brandy early or did Boris actually choose SEN over Northolt/Stansted/Luton?

Quite correct.

Yes, was sent a pic of him in front of the (in)famous brick fireplace. It is confirmed!

And more SEN news
 

https://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/180...ike-christmas/

Gary Pearce, GMB Regional Organiser said: "Our members at Southend Airport who work in baggage handling, security, aircraft dispatch and flight operations have been raising their concerns with management in relation to the lack of staff, lack of protective clothing insufficient training, changes to their contracts and what they are paid compared to staff in other local airports for months

This is a random route choice. Are their no destinations in near Europe unserved that they could do? EasyJet threw in the towel long ago on STN NCL yet Flybe feel they can make this work. Sceptical much...

the flight back would be very quite as we slip,to minus 100 goal difference

Sibiu
 

Two flights today to Sibiu. Start of the Christmas rush? Must be doing ok. Is it still thought that flights will return to Luton summer 2020?

Both Sibiu flights today were sold out and there will be two flights next Sunday as well.

Thank you Expressflight. If they are doing that well, why on earth are they going back to Luton? Anybody have any idea what's behind this?

There is huge demand just before Xmas for people all over Europe to get on a plane and see their families in late Dec, when people have moved country to find work

Perhaps a better evaluation of SEN-SBZ might be outside the Xmas peak

The fact that Wizz have acquired 17 slot pairs at LTN from TUI is probably the reason. I suspect they see LTN very much as their 'back yard' and they want to protect that against the competition. However, if (as reported elsewhere) the Wizz operations at SEN have so far exceeded expectations then some modest growth may also be expected there.

Xmas strike
 

Just been confirmed that the threatened strike at SEN is to take place on the 24th, 25th and 26th December after talks at ACAS failed to find a solution to the Union's issues surrounding staff safety and training.

And in other news:

1. Councillors have raised night time noise issues with airport and told all flights are within existing planning constraints. I wonder when the Council will wake up to the fact that using the Quota Count noise system implemented at LHR, LGW and STN is just not suitable for a short runway airport such as SEN? Most probably never.

2. Ryanair launch twice weekly Girona route for S2020.

asdf1234

Surely the RYR SEN-GRO route was announced weeks ago was it not?

I'm prepared to be persuaded, but why is the Quota Count noise system not suitable for "a short runway airport such as SEN" yet appropriate for LHR, LGW and STN?

I take the view that Southend is more than welcome to grab Wizz flights from LTN as I and other locals are plagued by noisy Wizz aircraft despite living over a mile away from the side of the runway. Can't imagine what it must be like living around Wells Avenue as it must be hell.

With the UK leaving the EU I would imagine there will be a slow decline in London passenger numbers as some migrants drift home and are not replaced so I would think there will be a retreat to fortress Luton at some point. Also the council will soon vote on a planning application to increase not only noise but passenger figures to 19 million. They can do this repeatedly to 22.5 million as this is the stated capacity within the existing boundary although they did claim once it was 18 million.

Story from just before xmas about a Loganair E145 being 'too heavy' to take off from Southend so 5 passengers had to get off.

“When the weather cleared at Derry, a combination of low pressure and rainfall left the runway surface at Southend in a condition which imposed limitations on the aircraft performance. The aircraft was consequently over its maximum available take-off weight for the conditions. "

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel...-a9259266.html

Makes me think that the Embraer must be a very marginal aircraft for Southend if it cannot fly a domestic route without offloading passengers while for Easyjet and Ryanair it was just another day unless they also had to off load passengers which wasn’t reported.

Found this very interesting article about air density and other weather issues making a difference to runway performance.

https://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/...eoff_and_Climb

More worrying is it cost £200 for a one way flight!!

Sigh - so how much do you think a one-way ticket at peak time on a long thin, domestic route by regional jet should be??

Better to be £200 and make a profit rather than the route only supporting £40 fares and the route gets pulled.