Southend means different things to different people. To half of Essex it's the seafront and the world's longest pleasure pier, a mile and a third of Victorian ironwork marching out into the estuary. To the budget airline crowd it was a cheap way out of the country, an airport that cheerfully bills itself as "London Southend" despite sitting a good forty-odd miles from anything most people would call London. Then again, so is Heathrow, and nobody blinks at that. From a pilot's seat, and especially a student pilot's seat training out of Elstree, "London airport" mostly means one thing anyway. Controlled airspace, and lots of it.
That's what Southend used to be to me. A big scary place slap bang in the middle of Class D, full air traffic control, procedures, readbacks, the lot. And it wasn't only the circuits. Any trip east into Kent, or a school fly-out across the channel to Le Touquet, meant calling up those same controllers to ask for a zone transit, often just to clip the very edge of their airspace. Even that felt complex and intimidating back then.
Four years on it's something far more boring. A long runway that's handy for training, the place KK went for its avionics upgrade, and not a lot else. Familiarity does that.
I got paid to land?
But here's the bit I never tire of telling. Southend is the only airfield I've ever flown to that paid me to be there. Before anyone screams to the CAA "commercial, commercial, commercial," let me head you off. No sponsorship, no deal, nothing like that. This was when COVID was up and down. one minute locked down, then one minute of freedom. The airlines were grounded and the tower team was at risk of going rusty with nothing to control. So the airport asked the local flying schools to come and fly circuits, purely to keep its people current, and waived every fee to make it happen. No landing fee, no circuit fee, no touch and go fee. Free. A passenger airport effectively paying to have my wobbly student circuits in its overhead.
The timing was perfect, because I couldn't do circuits at home. Elstree's circuit was off the menu thanks to our ever-delightful local population and their letters about the noise. (If you've read Let's Ban Hospitals Next, you know the type.) So while half the country was banned from leaving the house, I was being actively invited to bash the circuit at an international airport. You take your wins where you find them.
Let's be honest about what Southend is
It is not a destination, and I'll say that plainly, because the rest of this only makes sense once you accept it. There's no clubhouse, no apron full of taildraggers. A few expensive jets, yes, and a line of snowploughs slowly rusting away at the edge of the field, bought in for an influx of snow that was forecast and never came, and now, so I'm told, too expensive to keep running. No bacon roll with your name on it either.
What it is, is useful. It's about the closest proper Class D we can actually get into from Elstree. Luton's nearer as the crow flies, but Luton isn't going to welcome a training Cessna into its circuit, is it? Southend will. That makes it the natural place to go and learn the thing every Elstree pilot is quietly nervous about: real controlled airspace, with a real radar service and a real tower, talking to you like a grown-up.
The big scary airport that wasn't
When you learn out of Elstree, a 700-odd metre strip with a hill in the middle, the idea of doing circuits at a proper airport sounds about as relaxing as a tax audit. Radar. A tower. An instrument runway nearly three times the length of home. I spent the drive there convincing myself I'd fluff the radio and hold up a planeload of holidaymakers.
There were no holidaymakers. easyJet had based aircraft here since 2012, but it pulled the whole base out in August 2020 as the pandemic bit. Ryanair followed it out the door the next year. The Amazon cargo night flights that had upset half of Essex eventually stopped too. So the airport I'd been dreading was running on fumes, which, for a student, is the perfect time to turn up. There was just us, James in the right seat, and a controller who, I quickly realised, was glad of the company. (easyJet brought a base back in 2025, so today's Southend is a busier beast than the empty one I learned in.)
That's the whole point of sending a student somewhere like this. Elstree talks to you, but Elstree is air/ground. Southend is the grown-up adult version. Radar first, then Tower, proper clearances, proper readbacks. You can read about Class D in the book all you like. Flying eight circuits in it, with someone whose only job that day is to make you better, teaches you more than the chapter ever will. Half my nerves about every controlled zone since died on that runway. And if you've watched me for any length of time, you'll know the radio and I have never been close friends. If Southend's radar didn't rattle me, yours won't rattle you.
And the rating I didn't finish
Here's where I'll be honest, because the everything I do is built on it. I started the IMC, back when it was still badged the IR(R). I got about five hours in. I found flying under the hood oddly relaxing, that steady instrument scan, this one, that one, correct, repeat. Then someone slid an approach plate across the table, told me to work out the wind for each segment, minus two on that one, and my brain quietly left the building.
So I stopped. Not because I couldn't, but because I'd stopped enjoying it, and I fly for the joy of it, not to collect ratings I don't need. (I made a whole video about quitting, if you want the full confession.) One day I'll go back and do it as an intensive, somewhere I can think about nothing else. We never stop learning. The day I decide I have is the day I should stop flying.
And when that day comes, a field like Southend is exactly where that rating lives. A real ILS, a real radar service, real controlled airspace, close to home. It isn't where I trained for it. It's where I'd go to actually use it.
I kept coming back (and KK got expensive here)
Southend and I weren't done after training. I've flown in several times since in KK, most notably for the big one: the avionics upgrade. That wasn't routine maintenance, that was the thick end of thirty grand and a saga that was anything but smooth.
So I've now seen the place from both ends. The empty-circuit COVID version, and the fly-in-and-park version with the panel getting a serious, eye-watering upgrade while I tried not to look at the invoice. Which is where it gets honest about the cost of simply turning up.
The fly-in faff, and the credit card you'll need
This is not a roll-up-and-wander-to-the-clubhouse airfield, because there is no clubhouse. What there is instead is a shiny, expensive handling company far more used to private jets than to a bloke in a Cessna. Electronic doors. Stern warnings about security. Airside passes. And bills to match the decor. You park, then there's a proper long walk to get yourself off the apron and out, and there's paperwork waiting when you do.
The fuel, I'll give them, is a treat. The bowser comes to you and fills you up while you stand there feeling vaguely important. Just bring a large credit card, because the privilege is priced accordingly. Everything at a commercial field is, and Southend is no exception.
The food isn't even at the airfield
Worth saying plainly: there's no fly-in cafe experience here in the WhiskeyAlphaPilot sense. The food is at a local hotel, not on the field, because the field is a passenger airport, not a flying club with a kettle. Come for a bacon roll and a natter and you've picked the wrong airfield. Come because you need to be near Southend, and the hotel sorts you out.
The Vulcan hiding in a hangar
One more reason I keep ending up at Southend, and this one's got nothing to do with KK, or even with flying it. Tucked away in a hangar, out of sight unless you know to look, sits Avro Vulcan XL426, kept alive and run by the Vulcan Restoration Trust. I came over with the 501st UK Garrison and brought R2-TK along by road, because if you've built your own astromech you take him to meet a Cold War bomber. Obviously.
Then Caz and I got the moment you don't forget. We were allowed up into the cockpit for an APU run. Sitting in that flight deck with the systems alive around you, in an aircraft built to carry the deterrent over the horizon, is not something you shake off in a hurry. I've got photos of it knocking about somewhere.
So I've come to Southend three different ways. As a terrified student doing circuits. As a Cessna owner watching thirty grand of avionics go into KK. And by road, with a droid, to sit in a hidden V-bomber. Not many airfields manage that.
So, the score
Southend breaks the usual format. No bacon roll, because you don't stop for one mid-circuit and the food's off-site anyway. The single coke was expensive enough. No loo review, because Caz wasn't flying with me for any of it. It isn't really a destination, so scoring it on "was it a lovely day out" would be scoring the wrong thing entirely.
So I score it for what it actually is: the nearest serious bit of training airspace to home. On that, it's hard to beat. As a fly-in, though, it's a long walk, a stack of paperwork and a handling bill that stings. Brilliant for what it teaches you. Hard to love as a day out. Three out of five. Genuinely useful, not somewhere I'd fly for the fun of it.
The take
If you're a student dreading your first controlled-airport detail, go, and go gladly. The fear is always bigger than the reality. The controllers have seen a thousand wobblier students than you, the runway is enormous, and you'll come away more confident than you went in. And when the flying turns instrument, you'll be glad it's only up the road.
And if you ever get offered free circuits at an international airport because the world has stopped turning, say yes. We never stop learning, and Southend taught me that the big scary airport mostly just wants you to read back your clearance, keep your circuit tidy, and, just occasionally, keep its tower company.
WAP airfield reviews are about the visit, not the flight planning. Other sources of information are available - you should be reading them, not my scribblings.
