London Southend Airport - What Next?

London Southend was once the UK's fastest growing airports and in 2019 saw over 2 million passengers for the first time in its history. However, in March 2020, COVID hit and caused turmoil across the aviation sector, but one airport suffered more than any other in the UK - London Southend.

In 2008, Stobart Group bought the airport for £21 million and initially extended the runway by 300m to allow the airport to handle Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 aircraft. In 2011, an on site railway station opened with direct trains to London and Stratford. Additionally, the airport announced a 10-year deal with easyJet, with the airline basing three A319 aircraft and in 2018 and offering over 70 weekly flights from the airport.

In 2014, Stobart Air announced a franchise deal with Flybe to see two aircraft based at the airport with a third added in 2017 to serve domestic and European routes. In 2018, easyJet added a fourth aircraft, before Ryanair announced a new base at London Southend, being the third carrier to base at the airport with three aircraft. In May 2019, Loganair announced flights to five destinations across the British Isles. The airport was benefitting from the lack of capacity in London's busiest airports with an attractive travel time into London.

Then COVID hit. Loganair left the airport. Flybe fell into administration and the Stobart Air franchised routes were terminated. Wizz Air consolidated flights at nearby London Luton and Ryanair removed one aircraft from the airport. In August 2020, easyJet announced the closure of its base and the termination of all its routes from London Southend. This left the airport from being one of the UK's fastest growing and popular airports, to an airport with just two airlines (Ryanair and Wizz Air) and 11 destinations within Europe.

What next for London Southend?

With consolidation rife, especially within the London catchment, London Southend will find it difficult to recover. However, it does have capacity and in the years to come as flights are restored across Europe - it could be attractive to carriers again.

In the short term though, London Southend should look at two markets - visiting friends and relatives (VFR) and outbound leisure. The catchment is a large proportion of Eastern European diaspora - with the largest market including the Romanian and Lithuanian market. Both Ryanair and Wizz Air currently serve Bucharest and have previously served London Southend - Vilnius in recent years, as well as Wizz Air previously announcing lasi and Sibiu before moving the flights to London Luton. The VFR market is forecast to be one of the first to recover and the airline doing partnerships with carriers to operate these routes could be a sustainable start in recovering demand to the airport.

The second market to investigate is leisure. The Essex and London catchment is one of the wealthiest in the United Kingdom and as countries are added to the green list of travel from the United Kingdom, demand for leisure travel should increase. This has been shown with Faro in Portugal being the first flight to resume in Summer 2021 from London Southend and also a destination on the UK Green List. Attracting airlines which connect the UK to beach resorts - such as Balkan Holidays and TUI or growing its existing low cost carrier operations (Ryanair and Wizz Air) in order to attract passenger volume.

London Southend faces an uphill battle to recover to its 2019 levels, but as shown at other UK airports including Cardiff, Doncaster/Sheffield and Teesside - 2021 is demonstrating a pent up demand compared to 2020 and a strong desire for European connections. These three airports have seen a substantial increase in their network during COVID and could be examples of routes and airlines which London Southend could investigate in order to stimulate growth.

Photo: https://mediacentre.easyjet.com/content-files
Photo: https://corporate.ryanair.com/media-centre/stock-images-gallery/