by Five years ago, Telegraph Travel reported on the “remarkable revival” of London Southend. Two million passengers left Essex airport in 2019 on 9,467 flights, a year-on-year increase of around 30 per cent.
“Southend is the fastest growing airport in the country – and this week the red carpet was rolled out for the newest airline: low-cost Ryanair,” we wrote. Among the routes at the time were Prague, Barcelona, Bergamo, Bilbao and Alicante. It seemed the only way was up.
Since then, however, things have gone from bad to worse. Ryanair left in 2021, as pandemic-era air travel rules came into effect, and four of the five routes listed above no longer exist. Just 475 departures were recorded in 2023 – a 95 per cent drop on the 2019 figure. As I write this, London Southend’s daily departures board shows just two flights: EasyJet Flight 7858 to Amsterdam, and EasyJet Flight 7989 to Alicante (delayed by 45 minutes) . Southend has gone from being the fastest growing airport in Britain to the fastest growing.
But a glimmer of hope has emerged. Airport owner Esken (formerly the Stobart Group) has reportedly agreed a deal to hand over control to Carlyle, the £193.75 million-debted US private equity firm. The deal includes £32 million of new funding to secure the airport’s future. As the news broke, EasyJet announced additional summer services from Southend to Palma de Mallorca, Paris and Faro, the gateway to the Algarve. Perhaps the glory days could be returning to London’s smallest airport.
History of gambling
Older readers may remember that, during the sixties, Southend was the third busiest hub in Britain, behind only Heathrow and Manchester.
During the day it handled nearly 700,000 passengers a year with services to destinations including Paris, Ostend, Rotterdam and the Channel Islands. British United Air Ferries, which specialized in cross-channel flights carrying cars and their owners, became synonymous with Southend. But competition from regular cross-channel ferry services and the growth of Stansted and Luton airports saw it decline rapidly.
The seeds of its revival were sown in 2008, when it was bought for £21 million by the Stobart Group, who then spent over £100 million refurbishing it. EasyJet started services from Southend in 2012; Flybe joined soon after. Ryanair’s arrival in 2019 looked set to cement its place as a less successful but under-heralded alternative to those living in London and Essex.
It was, at the time, also, that won the praise of passengers tired of the experience at the capital’s more crowded hubs. Consumer magazine readers Which one of them? Southend has been rated London’s best airport for four years running, and in its 2018 poll – which examined eight categories including baggage claim, seating, toilets, security queues and passport control – achieved an overall score of 84 per cent out, which put Doncaster behind only one. -Sheffield among all British airports. More is not necessarily better.
Then came Covid. The pandemic made many people reluctant to travel, two years of ever-changing rules blocked those trying to escape, and financial support from the Government was often said to be insufficient. Then, just as holidays were returning to normal, rising energy costs began to pressure businesses and millions of Britons to tighten their belts.
British airports on the forecast
Southend is the only airport in the UK that is struggling to reach its peak. Data from aviation analysts OAG shows that only three British airports have reached their pre-Covid heights. Southend’s 1,064 scheduled departures in 2024 – although some flights could still be added – represent a drop of almost 89 per cent.
Southampton is another airport with an uncertain future. It welcomed a record 2.1 million passengers on 19,988 departures in 2017. Only 7,266 departures are scheduled this year (down 53.7 percent). It was badly hit by the failure of Flybe in March 2020, as well as the collapse of the relaunched Flybe, which was planning to return to Southampton, in January 2023. A runway extension is expected, which was completed in September last, which allows more aircraft to visit, it will help to stay profitable.
Then there’s Exeter, another former Flybe hub. There were 6,985 events in 2019, but only 2,335 are scheduled for 2024 (down 66.6 percent). It needed £5 million of taxpayer money to stay afloat during the pandemic, and continues to lose money.
Everyone will be desperate to avoid the fate of Doncaster-Sheffield, which closed completely in 2022, despite having its busiest year ever in 2019, when it welcomed 1.4 million passengers on 4,615 departures, to such diverse destinations with Gdansk, Vilnius, Malaga, Amsterdam. and Tenerife, and despite its popularity with flyers (according to Which? surveys).
Will London Southend bring back the glory days?
So what is London Southend’s ceiling? Can it hit two million annual passengers again? The airport is confident about the future. A spokesman said: “In terms of our near-term growth plans, we aim to exceed our peak of two million passengers (from 2019) in the next two to three years. By 2030, we predict we will be serving more than five million passengers a year.”
Chief executive John Upton said in a statement: “With a rapidly growing population of around eight million within an hour. [of the airport], and with other London airports facing the edge of a capacity cliff, we are ideally placed to serve those airlines looking to expand their operations in the London market. We are already doubling passenger numbers year on year and EasyJet is once again announcing further route capacity.”
An aviation expert expressed doubt that the reality will match those lofty ambitions, however. John Grant from OAG said: “[The deal with Carlyle] finally brings clarity of ownership and direction afterwards, and London could certainly do with the extra capacity. But can they reach the number of passengers seen before? Probably not – those amounts were achieved at gift and loss rates. Realistically, they might be an 800,000 passenger type annual facility.”
