George Frangeskides, Chairman at ALBA, explains why the Pilbara Lithium option ‘was too good to miss’. Watch the video here.
Looks like standard procedure when a firm notifies the FCA that it has entered administration. Nothing to see here otherwise IMHO.
Supercharger: The proceeds from the sale of the Bio Mass business were used, partly, to repay a £71m term loan - see RNS 9761U. There will be no Court action involved in the deal made between Carlyle and London Southend Airport Ltd because Esken have agreed to it on a consensual basis. There will be no chance to offer a "robust defence" of the Carlyle repayment claim as that claim falls by the wayside as part of the above agreement.
LSA have negotiated the deal not Esken so it's up to the latter to agree or not by 4th March.
I'm fully up to date thanks. The Reds spent a couple of day at LSA in the summer for local air shows - and that's it. Sorry for the thread drift but let's be accurate when suggesting things which might help LSA's viability and attractiveness to potential buyers.
That just doesn't sound realistic to me. Also would you please refrain from saying that the RAF "have planes at LSE" - they don't and haven't had since the 1940s.
Supercharger - why would Carlyle need to have a buyer?
Start up ACMI airline Ascend Airways have stated that they will be stationing aircraft at LSA in addition to Gatwick as previously mentioned. Their first aircraft will be a Boeing 738-82R-W G-HODL and crew training is likely to commence soon.
Aeroitalia will start scheduled services to London, Southend commencing 25th March 2024. So far Bergamo/Milan is bookable daily excluding Saturdays. Additional destinations may be announced shortly.
To answer that question we need to look at the likely value of LSA in 2020. Carlyle took the option of a 30% equity stake as the value of their £125m loan and they probably thought that was a discounted price on the actual value. Even taken at face value that gave a value of £400m for the airport at that time, although true value was perhaps over £450m. Passenger growth for 2019 was up 43% at 2.1m passengers and 2020 looked good - then along came Covid. This shows that LSA is a viable airport given the right circumstances, these including slot scarcity at the other LON airports. That situation is starting to reappear and should give the airport more opportunities for renewed growth. Just this week easyJet have increased their 2024 Palma flights to 8 per week and, although they have no aircraft based at LSA, they are operating W sectors whereby, for example, an Amsterdam based aircraft will operate AMS-SEN-ALC-SEN-AMS. To me this shows that easyJet are serious about LSA and it's quite feasible that they could re-open their LSA base in 2025 with up to four aircraft which could generate a 1m passenger throughput per annum. Add to that a couple of other airlines operating out of LSA and the numbers would soon start to look quite good. That's the way I would be trying to sell LSA and if there happen to be two or more seriously interested parties, to create a bit of up-bidding, the sale price might be more than some on here think. These are of course just my opinions but are based on a lifetime in commercial aviation. I have no connection now with LSA or Esken apart from still having access to various information grapevines relative to the former.
Oil Spill Response have announced that London Southend Airport is the new operational base for their two Boeing 727-200RE aircraft, previously based at Teesside Airport. Southend was chosen because of its "unique ability to offer side-by-side hangarage" for the aircraft. OSR provide operational capacity to disperse oil pollution in the sea by low-level (150ft) spraying of oil dispersants.
It's nothing like that. They're merely fencing off an area, already within the airport itself, adjacent to the Jet Centre for security/privacy reasons. That area was popular with photographers and plane spotters. Nothing whatever to do with the the sale of the airport at all.
The figure I recall for the number of annual terminal passenger for breakeven was 1.25m, although such a figure could only ever be a generalisation.
Also I didn't read anywhere in the presentation that "they are paying easyJet to operate from SEN". All I saw was a figure of £1.4m RECOVERED in respect of previous incentive payments to airlines. My understanding is that all recent deals had to be made on fully commercial terms. Therein lies one of the present difficulties in attracting new operators and routes.
Forget Atmosphere - ask anyone in the business for their opinion. The Blue Air flights are just for one day(!) 9th August at present in connection with the Heathrow problems. Sure they may possibly be enticed to use SEN in the future but LTN is their main UK destination. The new CEO will have his work cut out and at the moment does he even speak the same language as the airlines - see his profile? Best of luck to him and he may turn out to be an inspired choice, I hope so.
I've heard of optimism but please base it upon reality. I've been in commercial aviation all my working life and involved with SEN much of that time. There is NO indication that Wizz will restart SEN ops in 2022. From this weekend RYR will have left SEN completely. EZY are NOT talking about returning although there are local whispers that SEN management believe there is a chance they might. There will be NO internal freight flights to CAX or anywhere else. The Amazon operation is one-quarter of its peak level with no certainty that will improve. Things look very bleak for SEN but it is still possible that a couple of minor commercial operators might introduce routes in Summer 2022 and if EZY could be persuaded to return, and that's a big IF, Esken might see it worthwhile opening to commercial ops midway through next year. The London airport capacity landscape has changed totally and slot scarcity is unlikely to return for at least a couple of years, and that is what SEN needs to revive its fortunes.
It looks like the three E-190s were sold to SEBC II, a leasing company owned by the 90% shareholder of Great Dane Airlines, around 2018. He (Eiglid Bodker Christensen) leased them to Great Dane through SEBC II.
My goodness you are an optimist.
Would the fact that Southend Council (SBC) are the freeholder of LSA inhibit Carlyle's possible future ambitions to close LSA and build a housing development on the site? If they could buy the freehold from SBC it seems more straightfoward but that's surely not a certainty.