But for whom? Only thing which comes to mind is Titan as the Northside at Stansted becomes smaller. Would the new kids in town flatten everything and building something modern for good tenants?

I see the Navigator Pub and the Skylife Lounge will reopen in May (part time). I am a little surprised at this given that they are not in themselves an incentive to use the airport.

Perhaps there is announcement or two to come soon that could explain this decision.

The days of opening planned for the Skylife Lounge and Navigator are Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday "afternoons". I think it's simply the fact that (for June departures as an example) of the 26 weekly EZY SEN departures only 5 are not on those days and 16 of the 21 departures on those days are after 1300. I assume that "afternoons" will include the evening departures as well otherwise it would surely not be economic to open at all.

Esken are this morning appointing Administrators and trading in their shares has been suspended on the Stock Exchange. Apparently being a Guernsey registered company their planned restructuring was not possible under that jurisdiction.

The recapitalisation of London Southend Airport Limited under the Carlyle/Cyrus proposals is not expected to be affected by this.

Was its acquisition and money invested in Southend that sunk the company?

Of course it was. The dream when only picking up crumbs from other airports was totally undone by Covid. I still question whether SEN can stand on it's own two feet.

That's a fair question which will now be put to the test. The new owners' policy on ancillary activities, sadly neglected over past years, will be interesting to see.

I believe it is a little more complex than that but of course Covid did precisely what you said.

I am glad you make the point that SEN needs to stand on its own feet, you are right again. There are, I believe, UK airports - including some that serve many many millions of passengers each year - that do not.

Starting an airline based at the airport you own most probably didn't help...

A radical approach would be to follow Blackpool’s rescue plan and stop all scheduled services, as that is where the loses are coming from. Southend hasn’t got the economies of scale to support any passenger operations with just odd random flights operating each day. I don’t really see what is going to change under new owners, as the core issues are not going to go away.

I don't see SEN being comparable to BLK. Just think back to 2019 at SEN and you can see what was possible then. Yes, I know you'll say that slot shortages elsewhere gave SEN an advantage but that alone didn't make the EZY and RYR routes profitable, as I'm sure they were.

Those RYR aircraft must be invisible nowadays, but I mean seriously evidence suggests the RYR base/routes were not profitable. Yes they had Covid, it was a very unfortunate time etc and they closed the base in 2021. However no sign they are interested in returning. In fact in 2022 they were happy enough to open a base at Newcastle that continues today. If Southend was the holy grail they could have returned quite happily in 22/23. They were more than happy too at other places.
Even adding a few sun routes like they have at other smaller uk airports. But no nothing. Now of course EZY clearly have found a niche with the sun routes, ski routes, and the Paris and Amsterdam, and are clearly serving the routes that are profitable without the risk of setting up a base again.

Profitable for whom, the Airport or the Airlines..........we don't see the Airlines queuing up to make lots of money? Then again there is probably more profit elseware at the moment.
If things were so good before, why has Norwich picked up Ryanair this year?

Exactly my point. Norwich picked them up even with its 10 fee, and from first looks before launch the routes are selling well with some high prices across the summer. Just can't see RYR returning at the moment, as I have said before, SEN needs to see if it can develop anymore with its partnership with EZY. Perhaps a few more year round routes AGP perhaps

As Expressflight has said on a number of occasions, somebody with deep pockets needs to take a gamble that the market will eventually come to them as other airports become more constrained (and that aviation continues to grow). The odd easy or Ryanair flight is neither here no there.

They also need to make best use of the airfield estate to mitigate the losses while they wait.

Once bitten twice shy possibly. Put it this way, we will never know if EZY would have retained their base at SEN through Covid had it not been forced to go head to head with RYR. Seemed to me that nobody cared enough to offer EZY what was needed in terms of deal renewal because RYR would offer increased capacity on the best routes in a flash.

Wizz of course gave the airport a try, and they offered something different with their late evening arrivals / departures that the based aircraft could not do. RYR with indecent haste offered the same routes for less.

So then the airport was left with RYR and again they could have departed purely because of Covid but maybe it was just job done time to go home.

I guess now that is all in the past. Let us hope whatever lessons can be learned have been.

Gatwick is going through its DCO examination to expand. Luton is waiting a DCO decision to nearly double in size while Stansted has permission to substantially grow. So where is the constraint that will allow Southend to flourish?

Indeed but how long do you wait until you realise that you may only ever be a bucket and spade airport to the sun destinations in Spain and Portugal. Which is exactly right in what you say they need to plan better the use of the airfield estate to generate alternative income.

Esken fundamentally had the issue they took advantage of the capacity constraints in London and let the airlines in at very low rates and didn't create a solid business from it.

I remember Ken O'Toole from MAG being asked a question locally once in 2019 whether he saw SEN as a threat to STN growth and he said, how do SEN expect to sustain that growth and invest in an airport for the future when their airlines aren't paying them anything.

Turned out to be an extremely potent response.

Plenty of good observations in recent posts from a number of informed viewpoints.

To respond to just a few points, firstly I meant that the EZY and RYR routes were profitable to them in 2019 - obviously not to SEN though they hoped to make profits from car parking, train fares and airport terminal concessions etc..

I think the evidence suggests that the RYR base was a spoiler, so the "job done" comment seems valid but I've seen nothing to suggest the RYR routes were not profitable. I saw the 'mayfly' and 'didfly' numbers for each departure at that time so know the true load factors - yes, I know yield is king but only some RYR routes mirrored those of EZY and Wizz.

As far as RYR returning is concerned I doubt that will happen while there is a good chance of EZY re-opening their SEN base - why would SEN poke EZY with that stick?

The suggestion that the new owners should "make best use of the airfield estate" is a good one with the attempt at driving up pax numbers at all costs in the last 5 years before Covid leaving that side of things out in the cold.

Who can say if EZY would have retained the SEN base through Covid were it not for RYR's presence - after all they did close the STN base as well as SEN.

Of course other LON airports have expansion plans in the pipeline but SEN has that spare capacity here and now.

EZY didn't see SEN as just a "bucket and spade" airport. They operated to PRG, BOD, VCE, BUD, CGD, AMS and SXF for example pre Covid and SEN boasted 30 scheduled routes in January 2020 just before Covid arrived and SEN was a four-aircraft EZY base in 2019.

I hope that the SEN management will put together some of SEN's achievements in the pre-Covid area as part of their marketing plan for this new era. The saying "past performance doesn't necessarily guarantee future returns" is true but it does at least show SEN as an operational success relatively recently.