Ryanair has confirmed that it will be leaving London Southend Airport this winter. The low-cost carrier will close its two aircraft base in the Essex airport from November 1st onwards. Ryanair is the second airline to pull its base from Southend after easyJet made the same call last August.
Three years
Ryanair commenced operations from London Southend on 1st April 2019, kicking off its latest base in the bustling British capital. Once dominated by easyJet, both Ryanair and Wizz Air arrived in the airport in the same year, boosting competition and offering new destinations. The growth pushed Stansted to its highest-ever passenger traffic level of 2 million passengers in 2019.
However, the pandemic has sharply reversed all of these gains. According to Echo News, Ryanair is shutting down its aircraft base in Southend with effect from 1st November 2021, the start of the winter season. While the airline had already shrunk its base from three aircraft to two due to the pandemic, demand has been too low to sustain the base.
The news comes almost exactly a year after easyJet announced that it too would pull out of Southend, an airport it served since 2012 and was the largest operator from. In a statement, Southend Airport operator, Esken, said,
“Ryanair will cease operations based from London Southend Airport from November 1. Ryanair signed a five-year agreement to base three aircraft at London Southend Airport in 2018 and commenced operations 1st April 2019. However, Ryanair’s performance at London Southend Airport has been further affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and has now resulted in this decision…The financial impact of Ryanair’s base closure will be mitigated by a reduction in costs directly associated with serving Ryanair’s base and the low level of passengers expected during the winter season.”
Closing up
The loss of Ryanair and easyJet both in a matter of a year will take a huge toll on London Southend. Data from OAG shows that the airlines accounted for 842,000 and 1.2 million seats, respectively, in 2019. This fell to a much smaller 342,000 and 277,800 in 2020 for both airlines, a big blow. Once touted as Ryanair’s second major London base, those dreams are now over.
In 2021, Ryanair only plans to operate 278,775 seats from the airport, after which it will shut down operations. This leaves Wizz Air as the sole operator from London Southend, which currently only has a small presence at the airport.
Currently, Wizz Air only has 9,720 seats scheduled for 2021, all from its sole route to Bucharest, Romania. With this being the only flight from Southend in the winter currently, it could spell the end of the airport’s meteoric rise.
However, the absence of both easyJet and Ryanair could also make room for Wizz Air to substantially grow its operations at Southend. As the sole operator, it could create a larger base and negotiate far lower prices. For now, the future of Southend lies with which airlines will choose to operate from there in the future.
What do you think about Ryanair’s call to leave London Southend? Let us know in the comments!
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