London Southend ended 2022 with fewer than 90,000 roundtrip commercial passengers, according to the UK Civil Aviation Authority. That was just 4.4% of the two million it had in 2019 when it was the UK's 18th busiest airport. Currently, Southend has no winter routes but has four summer-seasonal offerings by easyJet, including returning Amsterdam, previously Southend's most popular route. Analysis shows that Southend has lost 69 destinations in the past decade.
Faro, Malaga, Palma
Having lost all passenger airlines, including easyJet, Ryanair, and Wizz Air, Southend welcomed back easyJet in May 2022, a vital development to steady the airport's airline foundation. The LCC launched Faro, Malaga, and Palma; highly traditional and well-demanded sun-and-spade routes. Previously, easyJet's network management told me that such markets do especially well from Southend.
Faro, Malaga, and Palma were enabled because they're summer-seasonal bases for easyJet. According to the UK CAA, the trio had 470,000 Southend passengers in 2019: Malaga 164,000 (then Southend's third most popular route), Faro 162,000 (fourth), and Palma 144,000 (sixth). They had fewer than 90,000 passengers last year, obviously mainly because of significantly lower capacity.
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Four routes in 2023
Now Amsterdam is returning. With 201,000 passengers, this was previously Southend's leading route. However, while easyJet typically had a double daily service in summer 2019, it'll now be a maximum of four weekly. In contrast, easyJet has up to 15 weekly Stansted-Amsterdam flights. Note that easyJet will serve Amsterdam on a 'W' basis using Faro-based aircraft and crew, routing Faro-Southend-Amsterdam-Southend-Faro.
As of January 25th, Southend's offering is as follows:
- Amsterdam: two to four weekly; from May 24th
- Malaga: two to five weekly; from March 29th
- Faro: two to four weekly; from May 24th
- Palma: four to five weekly; from May 1st
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69 destinations cut
Analysis of Southend's network using Cirium reveals that Southend has lost 69 destinations since January 2013, as shown in the map below. In order of seat capacity, those with 100,000+ departing seats were Alicante; Dublin; Barcelona; Rennes; Groningen; Geneva; Venice Marco Polo; Jersey; Paris CDG; Prague; Berlin Schönefeld (airport now closed).
Routes with fewer than 100,000 seats but more than 20,000 were in order of capacity: Malta; Ibiza; Bucharest; Glasgow; Manchester; Belfast International; Caen; Tenerife South; Lyon; Edinburgh; Cologne; Budapest; Lanzarote; Kraków; Bilbao; Antwerp; Menorca; Milan Bergamo; Vilnius; Aberdeen; Corfu; Newquay; Reus; Milan Malpensa; Vienna; Brest; Munster; Dubrovnik; Sibiu; Murcia (San Javier; airport now closed); and Murcia (Región de Murcia).
Also in order of seats, routes with fewer than 20,000 were: Bordeaux; Copenhagen; Kosice; Cluj Napoca; Pula; Londonderry; Guernsey; Bern; Venice Treviso; Catania; Sofia; Cagliari; Gran Canaria; Zadar; Chisinau; Carlisle (remember?); Maastrict; Maribor; Perpignan; Bergerac; Marseille; Châteauroux; Paderborn; Gerona; Kristiansand; Bergen; and Waterford. The latter was last served in January 2013, at the very beginning of the analysis period, by defunct Aer Arann for Aer Lingus Regional; it used ATR-42s.
Southend to Alicante?
Since 2013, Alicante has had over half a million seats. In 2019, it was Southend's second most popular route (199,000 passengers). Previously, I showed that Alicante was among Southend's strongest-performing routes profit-wise. However, it is not an easyJet base, although it is for Ryanair, complicated by its busiest airport being just up the road from Southend. Indeed, unless Southend secures a carrier with a base at the airport, it'll be reliant on inbound flights from bases elsewhere or W flights, limiting opportunities.
What routes would you like to see from Southend? Let us know in the comments.