A lesser known UK airport is vying to become one of the nation’s leading transport hubs, with plans for a major expansion.
London Southend Airport, located 40 miles from central London in Essex, gained new joint owners earlier this year and has ambitions to triple its capacity to 10 million passengers per year.
Carlyle Airport Group chief executive Amit Rikhy is one of the new owners, and believes London Southend is the only airport serving the capital with the potential for large-scale expansion.
Rikhy told an audience at the London Aviation Symposium that they were investing in efforts to make people more aware of London Southend as it continues to recover from a dip in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak.
The terminal has a capacity of 3.5 million, though many of its airline services haven’t come back since lockdowns grounded flights across the country.
But according to the airport, passengers are growing slowly. They expect a million passengers to be passing through the terminal by next year.
The airport continues to offer flights to holiday hubs beloved by Britons including Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Dalaman, Marrakech, Paris, Amsterdam, Alicante, and Lapland with these destinations and various others mainly served by easyJet.
Meanwhile, BHAir provides routes between the airport and Bourgas in Bulgaria. EasyJet also launched new routes to Pisa, Antalya, and Enfidha in Tunisia this year.
Rikhy believes that Southend’s location put it in a good position to vie for supremacy among the nation’s airports.
“Why did we invest in Southend? Access to London,” he told attendees, as per Aviation Week.
“This airport is the only airport in the London market that has capacity. The large airports in London are running out of capacity; they don’t have slots.”
Rikhy says in addition to the awareness efforts, they’re also investing in ensuring that the passenger experience is streamlined, to encourage people to pick the airport over others.
As part of this, they’re looking at state-of-the-art tech to make checking in quicker and easier.
“We’re looking at things like self-handling baggage and making it more efficient for passengers to self-check-in … queue management and better wayfinding,” he said, adding: “We invested recently in new X-ray security equipment.”
However, it’s not clear when the expansion will start. The Carlyle Group has been approached for comment via email.