AN airport chief executive wants to double the passenger numbers flying from Southend in 2024.

John Upton, the CEO of Southend Airport, in Eastwoodbury Crescent, has appeared in a new video for the airport's YouTube account, outlining the plans they have in store.

In an attempt to recover following many previous challenges from the Covid pandemic, Mr Upton has announced new partnerships, travel destinations, and the return of some customer-favourite routes.

The airport boss announced a new partnership with Balkan Holidays which will allow customers to fly to Bulgaria for the first time from the airport.

Southend Airport will continue flying to Palma, Malaga and Alicante this summer and it is also returning to its eight Majorca services with a bid to offer even more in the future.

It comes as this week the airport re-confirmed a partnership with Aeroitalia, Italy’s second biggest airline.

Aeroitalia will be its exclusive partner for flying from Milan into London multiple times a week.

In addition to the new Italian route, a range of routes have been added to Southend Airport, including Paris, Amsterdam, Geneva and Grenoble, with this year's winter schedule the busiest in the past four years.

During the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, in 2022 the airport was flying around 100,000 passengers to three destinations.

The following year it continued to work on its recovery, flying passengers to ten destinations around the world. 

Now more is set to come in 2024.