_________________________________________________________________________________ London Southend Airport
as CEO,” Jude opens.“ 2025 has been a great year for the business too, with the planned easyJet base launch at the end of March 2025 driving a whole range of projects and generating positive feedback from both the airline and its passengers.
“ We’ ve almost tripled our passenger volume, from 250,000 to around 720,000 passengers per year. To cope with this growth, we’ ve hired an additional 170 people to increase our team by around 50 percent. Through all of this, our safety record, overall operational performance, and customer experience have all improved. London is also an important market for business aviation, and our Jet Centre has also grown significantly, with around 20 percent year-on-year growth in the last year.”
Having recruited significantly, Jude is clearly passionate about maintaining the right number of people as the airport’ s passenger numbers continue to grow.“ We ensure new recruits are security vetted and properly trained, but it’ s also important to give people time to get used to the culture without feeling rushed,” he says.“ We’ re really blessed in terms of where we are in the world, as we’ re right on the doorstep of Southend. A large majority of our workforce, specifically around 85 percent, live in a Southend postcode, and are what I describe as hyperlocal employees, with many of our team members walking to work.
Employee engagement
“ There’ s a real sense of community among our people and this translates to our passenger experience, with many passengers commenting that staff are genuinely happy in their work. Aside from successfully delivering our recruitment and retention strategy, we always look for feedback and make small adjustments that ensure our people not only
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