Southend Airport’s passenger numbers are low. They had just over 40,000 passengers last year. This year, the figure will be much lower as the one destination that accounted for 92% of passengers is no longer served. The majority of Southend’s passengers were Ford employees flying to Germany with a company called Flightline. They went bust the same day Stobart bought the airport and Ford employees now fly from London City.

AirportWatch commissioned a report in 2007, entitled Fallible Forecasts, to examine the Government’s 2007 air passenger forecasts. It was updated in Further Fallible Forecasts, published in March 2009.

Even the Government, which is keen on aviation, thinks that Southend Airport’s target of 2 million passengers per annum (mppa) is unrealistic. The Airport claims support for the expansion in the 2003 Air Transport White Paper, but they obviously didn’t read it properly. This is what the East of England Regional Assembly has to say about it:

“The JAAP does include the support and identified role of the airport contained in the 2003 Air Transport White Paper (ATWP). However, contrary to JAAP policy LS1, neither the ATWP nor the East of England Plan identifies growth at London Southend of up to two million passengers per annum (mppa). The two mppa figure was an assumption used in the demand and impact appraisal work and was based on the maximum use of the runways at the major airports and no new runway capacity.

“Given that the ATWP supported new runways at Stansted and Heathrow, the role for Southend that is supported was not for two mppa, but to meet local demand and the needs of business aviation. This is reflected in policy E7 and paragraph 4.31 of the East of England Plan.”

from EERA’s JAAP response

Further reading

• UK Air Passenger Demand and CO₂ Forecasts – Department for Transport (note that there is no mention of Southend)