Wizz base? Well that depends upon the level of subsidies from Stobart. Plenty of willing airports around Europe all dangling Euro to lure.

A base, wizzair would want last arrivals of the day past midnight, could SEN accommodate?

Wizz base at SEN, really? But they have been cutting down their network instead of expanding and left SEN with just one route to OTP..What would make them change course and (re-)start expanding? Would a fully loaded A321neo be able to take off from such a short runway? Or just the A320Ns?

When does the airport reopen and when it does where to and how often?

mariofly12

The discussion is more about Wizz UK expanding into the traditional bucket and spade market rather than Wizz proper and their normal East European routes

And there are plenty of “bucket and spade” customers who would prefer to fly from SEN than face the vagaries of the motorways to get to LGW, STN or LTN.

Sun routes
 

I am pretty sure Stobarts are negotiating already for Wizzair to replace some of old EZY routes. They certainly won't just sit and watch the passengers fly out of Gatwick instead!

If Wizz are going to be flying between Southend and Mediterranean beaches, what advantage will they have over Easyjet's earlier base ?

Flying a W route from (eg) Warsaw to SEN, then Malaga, return to SEN and back to Warsaw is probably at the very edge of what a Poland based crew can do in a single day - with a non-trivial risk of running out of hours in peak summer when delays inevitably appear

Could Wizz viably use crews based in Eastern Europe on low salaries flying W routes for a SEN focus airport ? Or would they need to base aircraft and crew (either local residents or use hotac) in SEN ? If Wizz make SEN a 1 or 2 aircraft base, how does it make a decent amount of profit when Easyjet with a far stronger brand in the UK struggled ?

I'm hoping this is not going to rely on Wizz paying zero fees for 3 years at SEN...

The original post was about WIzz UK setting up a base at SEN similar to CWL and DSA. The advantage Wizz has over EZY is a lower cost base. How much do you think EZY was paying SEN?

davidjohnson6

I think you are making a rather sweeping assumption saying that the easyJet base at SEN was one at which they "struggled". Did they also "struggle" at STN and therefore had to close the base for that reason? I've seen no evidence of that being true at either and they steadily expanded their SEN base up until this year.

I doubt that Wizz would operate a W pattern through SEN from an Eastern European base if they planned to serve Mediterranean destinations. Far better to open a base, maybe seasonal, with one or two aircraft as they do not seem averse to the former elsewhere, e.g. CWL. I wouldn't though take an anna.aero editorial piece as reliable evidence that it will happen and in all honesty I think it unlikely.

I imagine Easyjet made profit at SEN in 2019, but that the profit margin or return on equity was rather lower than (eg) Gatwick. Did Easyjet cover their cost of equity capital at SEN ? Who know...
When times turned tough, it's the weaker bases that are usually cut

I imagine Easyjet was likely paying rather low fees at SEN compared to LGW While Stobart could offer a much lower cost base to Wizz than Easyjet, I'm not clear how much lower Stobart can go on airport fees, given that they were struggling to find the cash to pay a dividend to shareholders

I know that others on here know far more about Easyjet at SEN than I do. I mean no disrespect to them, but I do genuinely wonder how all the money flowed and will flow at SEN - I ask awkward questions out of core interest in the topic. The person who asks no questions on a subject often has no interest in the subject...

Doesn’t help when the airport is restricted to a 17 hours a day operation for passenger flights (6:30- 23.30 with limits between 23:00 and 23:30) when the same aircraft can fly cargo 24 hours a day with quota limits. At Luton the first Wizz wave departs from 5:50 and returns into the early hours to the annoyance to the locals. That could make a difference of one extra return flight.

Anyway all of this is speculation as no one has a clue what will happen. No one had a clue when Easyjet said they were coming, The same applied to Ryanair and the same will apply to Wizz although they appeared on wish lists just because they were low cost carriers.

At the time the Wizz "red eyes" established at LTN were the only method of creating extra slot capacity at a constrained airport.

With Wizz anxious & willing to build LGW that creativeness will no longer be needed at LTN probably.

Wizz have also stated recently too that LTN has infrastructure & planning constraints..."so we want to grow elsewhere in London".

That reference in the context was almost certainly LGW...however.

Southend are more than welcome to a selection of Luton’s flights. During normal times they would not even be missed and would reduce airside overcrowding.

Great opportunity for anyone who would like a close up of the runway at SEN. There is a catch. You have to dress as a reindeer.

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfund...outhendairport

BA have announced they will be using Southampton for 11 new destinations to utilise spare weekend capacity. No doubt they would have looked at Southend and maybe even had talks with Southend management. Is it the case that as Ryanair now has a base at Southend BA could see themselves being pushed out of successful routes so they are playing safe with Southampton meaning Southend has lost out due to the Ryanair factor?

I doubt it. These flights have been moved around a fair bit. They’ve tried MAN, STN, BHX, BRS and even operating a route from DUB. SOU probably offered a decent deal, and it’s a fairly wealthy area still connected to London. They are pretty much once weekly flights seating 98 passengers so more likely they can go for a smaller airport and avoid any competition at all.

Does Southend have any stored Airbuses any more, I noted two more off to MAN today?

According to FR24, there's just one A319 left there. Until I looked for that I didn't realise one of Titan's new A321 freighters (assuming the conversion has already been done) is there too.

That's what I thought, thanks for checking perhaps the end of cheap parking fees at SEN for EZY!?