Ryanair to close London Southend base in mid-4Q21

Ryanair (FR, Dublin Int’l) will close its base at London Southend with effect from November 1, 2021, the airport’s owner and operator has revealed. The LCC signed a five-year agreement to base three aircraft at the airfield, located roughly 65 kilometres east of central London, in 2018 and commenced operations there on April 1, 2019. However, it scaled back the number to two aircraft – B737-800s – in 2020, following a decline in demand brought on by the pandemic.

In a statement, Esken, formerly known as Stobart Group, said Ryanair’s schedules, load factors, and yields have continued to suffer significantly as a result of the prolonged impact of COVID-19 on travel demand. As such, following a review of its network, Ryanair has now decided to redeploy its two aircraft to its other bases so as to improve its own overall network efficiency with effect from the start of the winter flying season. Esken is therefore in talks with other carriers – low-cost and full service – to fill the capacity gap ahead of the summer 2022 season.

“The terms of the deal which had been entered into with Ryanair in 2018 were based on a significantly different set of market and economic parameters to the present day,” David Shearer, Executive Chairman of Esken, commented. “We are therefore commercially agnostic to this decision and will look to build sustainable and profitable passenger growth for London Southend Airport with a range of other carriers as demand recovers into a post-pandemic world.”

Ryanair is Southend’s only remaining scheduled operator at present, offering flights to Alicante, Bilbao, Brest Guipavas, Bucharest Otopeni, Dublin Int’l, Faro, Kerkyra, Malaga, Milan Bergamo, Palma de Mallorca, and Reus. Wizz Air (W6, Budapest) is slated to start a 3x weekly service to Bucharest from November 1 onwards, the ch-aviation schedules module shows.

Esken says the impact of Ryanair’s departure on both its EBITDA and cash headroom in FY2022 will be negligible given it expects limited flying during the winter season. For FY2023, management has time to implement mitigating actions which include cost savings and the deferral of discretionary capital expenditure as well as attracting new carriers to operate the routes vacated by Ryanair. If no such actions are taken, the impact on EBITDA and cash headroom in FY2023 is expected to be around GBP1.4 million pounds (USD1.94 million).

Ryanair did not respond to a ch-aviation request for comment.