easyjet To Have Flights From Southend Airport !

June

17

by admin // in Airport

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From the easyjet website:

easyJet, today, announces that it will begin operating from London Southend Airport from April 2012. The UK?s largest airline will open its newest base with three A319 aircraft, over 150 employees and with around 800,000 passengers expected to fly in the first year.
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There will be 70 easyJet flights per week and passengers will have a choice of around ten different European destinations including Barcelona, Faro and Ibiza. Tickets will go on sale at the end of July.
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London Southend Airport, with a multi million pound brand new terminal opening in autumn 2011, will be easyJet?s eleventh UK base and is located within a minute?s walk from a new train station with superb links into London. easyJet has signed a ten year partnership agreement with Stobart Group, owners of the airport.
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Catherine Lynn, easyJet?s Customer and Revenue Director, said: ?We are excited to be opening London Southend as easyJet?s 20th base airport. The airport is in a fantastic location just outside London with a fast rail link into the city. This is a unique opportunity to offer a world class customer experience, with passengers able to get from the plane to the train in 15 minutes.
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?Through offering easy and affordable travel, we expect the new routes to appeal to customers in Essex and London looking for a convenient new departure point for many top European destinations. We also believe that the European city links will also attract a high number of inbound business and leisure passengers to London next year.

Their complete press release is here.

Interesting viewpoint from Simon Calder in the Independent:

Paris and Tokyo make do with two airports; New York has three. Following yesterday’s announcement that Southend is to become an easyJet base, London is about to become the world’s first fully fledged six-airport city.
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Madness, you may conclude. Even though Heathrow has, for decades, been full to bursting, the recent decline in traffic elsewhere means there is space at Gatwick, Luton and Stansted ? all of which easyJet already serves.
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Yet from the airline’s perspective, starting up in south-east Essex makes perfect sense. Budget carriers revel in playing one airport off against another, and Southend must have given easyJet a delicious deal to lure it in on such a scale. At present, you can fly anywhere you like from Southend as long as it is Ireland or Jersey; easyJet’s three Airbus jets will expand the departure boards to include our favourite European sun spots.
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The airline knows it will cannibalise some of its existing traffic ? particularly Stansted travellers from east London and Gatwick passengers from north Kent. But its main purpose is to pursue Billericay man and Brentwood woman. At present Essex residents are most likely to be found flying Ryanair, the dominant airline at Stansted, with British Airways latterly setting up a successful Mediterranean operation from London City. It is no coincidence that the three specific destinations mentioned by easyJet ? Barcelona, Faro and Ibiza ? are on the route maps of both its rivals.
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Travellers from elsewhere in the UK may, though, be baffled. After all, there is general agreement that Britain has too many airports, with Plymouth next for closure. Last year easyJet pulled out of East Midlands because it wasn’t making money. In travel terms, the UK is two nations: London and the rest.

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