The only passenger due to fly out from the airport this Christmas was the Carrot, the mascot of the supermarket. He didn't make it to his plane.
The airport's security lanes and departure lounge are the backdrop for the budget supermarket's pre- Christmas advert, in which the carrot is so busy kicking a ball around the terminal he fails to join his family
In a year in which budget airlines and cargo flights have deserted London's sixth airport, Aldi has been one of the few nibbles of Christmas cheer. All scheduled flights have stopped, and management faces an uphill battle to keep the business going.
When it was developed a decade ago, it looked like it would grow rapidly as airlines established bases.
The talk of the capital's centre of gravity moving east after the Olympics made it more convenient. Boris Johnson wanted a four-runway super- hub airport to be located in the Thames estuary.
Then came Covid. The UK airports have recovered on average to 80% of their pre-pandemic numbers, but only 5% of summer passengers have come from Southend. In the peak season, only 15,000 people a month show up.
easyJet has gone for winter since it stopped flying from Southend. It was a relief for residents to hear that Amazon was moving its cargo operation to another location, but another source of income was gone from the area. The airport is looking for new permanent customers for its passenger terminal and a fully functioning bonded warehouse, as well as booking some short-term business.
The airport has a train station just yards from the terminal that is new for the reopening. The Guardian didn't get off. There are weeds on the forecourt and car parks are empty.
The benches are clean and the lights are off inside.
"It's not easy standing here," says the new chief executive. Isn't it strange that there's an empty terminal?
The airport has about 300 staff, including 40 firefighters, air traffic control and security, as well as those who work at the hotel, which is close to the train station.
The staff have a can-do attitude and are willing to pitch in when customers are still coming. The visit of MrBeast, the highest-rated individual YouTuber whose own customer base is high enough for him to give away a private jet as a prize in the video shot at Southend, has been beyond Kevin.
Santa's grotto used to be in the big conference room. The material is branded with the Flybe logo and is still decorated with marketing banners. Flybe was co-owned at the last by the owners of Southend.
Esken is looking to sell off some of its remaining business concerns in order to invest more in the other.
There is still a logic to the idea of a small airport being a business, from the state-of-the-art security scanning to the solar panels that provide 25% of the airport's power. He believes that it could take millions of passengers to accommodate another runway.
We could take planes away from the spaghetti junction of London airspace if we built more pavement in London.
It can grow from 40 plane movements a day to 40 an hour under its current licence.
Scheduled flights would be helpful in the short term. It remains well used for general aviation, with small planes for private pilots and enthusiasts, despite the fact that the West Ham football team has flown out on European away games in the past.
In an era when travellers could still drive their cars on to freight planes to cross the Channel from the Essex airport, Southend was the third-busiest airport in Britain in the 1960's.
For a long time, it was little more than a flying club because of the growth of Stansted. It reopened almost a decade ago with a bigger runway and easyJet starting flights to Spain.
The expansion came as a shock to residents who were suddenly under flight paths, or worse, cheek by cheek with jets taxiing for takeoff.
The long-term sleep-deprived Alex Carr spoke of the consequences with a somewhat wild-eyed look. He bought his house long before airlines considered moving in. He says passenger planes were thrown from his hedge by the taxiway. He has not been tempted to throw pebbles at the craft. You couldn't sit in the house because they held planes 40 feet away.
Janet Marchant said living by the airport during the Pandemic was nice. Since 2020.
Residents are not sure if the numbers will come or if there will be jobs in the area. Unless you're an aviation enthusiast, deafness and have no sense of smell, it's a limited market.
All is calm this Christmas. From the outside of the air traffic control tower, the greatest noise is the traffic on the road.
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