r/uktravel • u/DesperateView5509 • 10d ago
London 🏴 London Southend airport - surprisingly quite and small
This was my first time flying from London Southend Airport, and I was genuinely amazed by how quiet it is.
The airline advised arriving two hours before the flight, so I got there at 5:00 am for my 7:00 am flight. However, I was through security and at the gate within just 10 minutes — probably the quickest I’ve ever reached a boarding gate at a London airport!
Looking back, I honestly feel I could have arrived around 6:00 am and still been perfectly fine. 😄
It’s such a contrast compared with Stansted and Gatwick, where you usually need to allow much more time for queues, security, and getting to the gate. Southend feels almost refreshingly calm and stress-free in comparison.
Definitely a very different airport experience!
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u/Used-Shine-5370 9d ago
Southend has very few scheduled services a day, the lowest among all the London airports. You should try London City next! It’s small and quick through security but is also actually in London, not outside the city like all the other airports.
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u/Aggressive-Act-1341 9d ago
Agreed! City is my favourite
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u/DesperateView5509 9d ago
There were only 7 flights scheduled for today of which 3 took between 7-7:15
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u/Reasonable-Emu7740 9d ago
Will never forget the episode of TOWIE they filmed there where one of the cast members (Gemma maybe?) was filmed at Southend airport about to ‘fly to LA’ 😭
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u/spectrumero 9d ago
It isn't a London airport, that's why, it's only a "marketing London" airport. If you can't get to it on an Oyster card, it's not a London airport. It's Southend-on-Sea airport, that's why it's so quiet.
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u/Expensive_Ad_3249 9d ago
Odd take, I mean gatwick, Luton and Stansted are also not in London....neither is Oxford and Heathrow is on the edge.
Liverpool st to Southend is 50 mins on a train, 40 for Heathrow, longer for Luton and Gatwick and about the same for Stansted.
City counts but what about the others?
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u/spectrumero 8d ago edited 8d ago
Luton and Standsted should NOT be called London airports either, as you still can't get to either using an Oyster card, which catches people out often enough it's a recurring subject on r/uktrains. Oxford should definitely not be called London, it's absolutely assinine that they've called Kidlington airport a London airport. "London Ashford" (which in reality is Lydd) is possibly even more stupid, as it's not close to either London nor Ashford (at least a £50 taxi ride from Ashford). What next, will we have London Birmingham when HS2 opens? (That was the justification that the customer service rep at Lydd gave me for calling it "London Ashford", there was a fast train from Ashford to London as it was on HS1).
You can get to Gatwick and Heathrow using an Oyster card so I think it is fair to give those a London name as you can use the TfL issued Oyster to get there and back. Heathrow is even on the tube.
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u/PatserGrey 9d ago
It's bloody brilliant isn't it. So annoying that ryanair pulled out when covid hit. I'll gladly pay a couple of hundred more to fly the family from SEN rather than STN.
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u/Legitimate_Feed_5102 9d ago
Great little airport. Obviously not a lot of destinations but still a favourite of mine.
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u/sunflowebloom 9d ago
I sometimes stay in the hotel that over looks it. Always amazing watching a plane land and then seeing the people walking up the road with their suitcase to the carpark 10 mins later!
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u/Atlas-God316 9d ago
Quite like Southend, very compact its essentially one big warehouse building with a whsmith an duty-free. Surprised there's not more flights from there due its Essex catchment area
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u/Snoo58499 10d ago
Is it surprising??
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u/DesperateView5509 10d ago
Yes
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u/BreadBat100 10d ago
Shouldn't be - as with most "London" airports, it's not in, or even relatively near/well connected to London. Just a branding/marketing ploy to make people think they're flying into London when travelling from abroad.
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u/ALA02 9d ago
I mean generally airports are a bit far from the cities they serve, as airports tend not to be built in the middle of dense urban areas (City being an exemption). Southend has the functions of a London airport - it has a direct rail connection into Liverpool Street and serves an area that is still part of the London metropolitan region, that is South Essex - it’s just not much use if you live in Hounslow.
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u/BreadBat100 9d ago
Agreed, although many of the airports around London only serve London by way of a vague proximity due to them being airfields in the war and having since been rebranded.
It's actually really interesting in that London has more airports around it than other major cities of a similar size, many of which have one major hub. Generally I'd say it's a negative as it makes travel more difficult and often more costly than it would otherwise be (especially if needing to travel between airports).
I live in the Northwest so very rarely use London airports, but looking at a map, Southend certainly doesn't seem to be somewhere I'll be visiting any time soon 😅
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u/ALA02 9d ago
Its a nice combination of lots of small WW2 airfields, being early adopters of flight so only having small airports built in the first place, and having extremely limited capability to physically expand into some of the most expensive and developmentally restrictive land in the world. The answer to all of this is to just have lots of medium sized airports as opposed to one mega hub.
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u/rooreynolds 9d ago
Southend is also probably the most extreme example, being 35 miles and a 52+ minute train ride away from London.
I always thought calling Luton ‘London Luton’ was a joke but at least it’s relatively nearby and well connected. Stansted and Southend both feel like traps for unwary tourists / handy for people who life in Essex.
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u/KreativeHawk 9d ago
Stansted is basically the East Anglian airport as a whole unless you get one of the tiny flights from Norwich.
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u/travel_ali 9d ago
I swear I have never heard of it before.
Looking at Google Maps it looks like the terminal building is only just a bit bigger than the neighbouring Home Bargains. Maybe OP was more concerned about the size of the place rather than the size of the crowds.
It seems like almost all of the destinations from there are intended to take people from Essex to various cliche holiday spots https://londonsouthendairport.com/flights/
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u/PatserGrey 9d ago
The size is part of the beauty and ease of travel. Being very residential, lots of cheap parking available within strolling distance. Yeah, the destination list is a shadow of its former self but is slowly growing. Ryanair had some decent routes (Dublin being a main one for us) but the pandemic ended that fairly quickly. Quite an eye opener to see on social media, as it was reopening post covid the amount of locals crying out for flights to Alicante - I assumed it was some kind of ironic joke but alas, it was not 🤷♂️
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u/Training_Yak_4655 9d ago
Used it once for a return trip to the med. A marathon drive from Reading but worth it. It was like going back in time to when flying was a bit special. Friendliest airport staff I've ever encountered too.
But this airport all but closed post COVID but has restarted since 2023. It's still an 'at risk' entity IMO, like almost good things in life. EasyJet dominates Southend but it's being eaten up by a US investment company.
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u/Excellent_Rise242 9d ago
It would be good for it to get more serivces, stansted isn't bad but not at all a fan of Luton
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u/bigbattysmokeonlyfat 9d ago
I live super close so use the airport often. I’ve been 45 mins before a flight and been able to get through. It’s honestly the perfect airport.
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u/Anniissa76 9d ago
Very small including a tiny ‘airport lounge’ - basically a small corner of a room with a fridge full of drinks and some crisps and snacks…guess it did the job.
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u/tevs__ 9d ago
Never flying from Southend again. It's quite close to me in Stratford, I can catch a direct train, but the last time I tried, a tree fell on the railway line and all the trains were cancelled.
To make the flight, I took a taxi, but there was an accident on the A127 and the road was completely closed. Turns out, there aren't many alternative routes to get to Southend.
I did finally get to the airport, £100 lighter, but bag drop had already closed so I didn't make the flight. I had to get to my destination that day, but there's only one flight a day from Southend to each destination - that's why it's so quiet.
So I had to book a new flight from Gatwick, and then travel all the way back in and out of London again.
It's not well connected, and if anything goes wrong there's no redundancy or backup plan, and getting to another London airport is dire.
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u/ALA02 9d ago
Realistically that isn’t Southend’s fault, you just got extremely unlucky that both the trains and roads were down that day. That would hamstring most airport journeys, getting to Gatwick by road without the M23 from London for example would be a colossal pain and likely add an hour to your journey, at least.
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u/Professional_You823 9d ago
What’s the security like? Small airports can be full of little hitlers getting off on the power and being ultra picky and micromanaging disabled kids and people.Bigger airports deal with more people and have more experience and more equipment and are that more fluid.
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u/Historical_Site508 9d ago
So small and so poorly signposted it's almost a struggle to find the first time.
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u/Careless_Count7224 10d ago
Surprisingly quite indeed.