SOUTHEND Airport has unveiled an ambitious vision for the future- including major plans to upgrade its runway and huge investment to one day accommodate 20m passengers a year.
The proposals, revealed in a Stobart "future growth" presentation, centre on upgrading the runway to take both Boeing 737-800 aircraft and Airbus 321 aircrafts and major upgrades to both the departure and arrival terminals.
As things stand, the current departures terminal is at 90 per cent capacity, with the hope a new terminal would have a capacity of 7 million, which would be matched in the new arrivals terminal.
It was also revealed that current car parking is at 80 per cent capacity, with plans pitched for a new multi-decked car park, with space for between 2,500 and 3,000 cars, as well as additional parking with the same number of spaces.
Recently, the airport partnered with a “global logistics firm”, believed to be Amazon, with the vision for growth revealing the partnership will result in 2,500 ‘movements’ per year.
Earlier this year, the Echo revealed that the airport was hoping to secure a new hotel on site, with it now confirmed this is likely to have 130 rooms.
The new hotel is a necessity with the current on-site hotel also at 90 per cent capacity.
The airport is hoping to secure more than three million passengers during 2020, and is hopeful in the future of matching the likes of Luton Airport.
In a video released by Proactive, which provides global financial news, Stobart Group CEO Glyn Jones, said: “We have the capacity for five or six million passengers in the current terminal infrastructure, and we have plenty of capacity in the airport so that is not an issue. Our plan is to increase supply to get the number of number of passengers to match that capacity by 2023.
“That is ambitious and will require us to double where we are now. We have doubled ourselves in the last two years so there is no reason not to be confident about that.
“Going forward we aim to take this airport first to 10 million passengers, and then to get ourselves broadly speaking to the size of a Luton Airport, 20 million passengers in the medium term.
“To do that we do need more investment, we are planning to increase our arrival capacity, we are planning already and no exactly what we need to do to increase our car park capacity, we are planning to reconfigure the departure lounge to increase capacity, and that will allow us to add commercial options for passengers.”
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