London to get its sixth international airport in Southend - just in time for the Olympics

The budget airline easyJet unveiled ambitious plans yesterday to transform Southend-on-Sea airport into a rival for Gatwick and Stansted.

It means London will be served by a sixth international airport in time for the 2012 Olympics.

EasyJet will carry around 800,000 passengers in the first 12 months at its new Southend base, three miles from the seafront of the Essex resort.This is set to rise to two million a year by 2020, making London Southend Airport almost as big as the capital’s City Airport.Under a ten-year partnership with the airport’s owners, Stobart Group, easyJet is to start flights at Southend from April next year. A multi-million-pound terminal is due to open at the airport this autumn.

Currently private jets and charter flights take off from the airfield - although there are a few commercial flights to Ireland.

The Southend expansion will create about 300 jobs, half with the airline and half at the airport. It will serve a range of destinations in Europe, including Barcelona and Ibiza.Airport bosses said passengers would never wait more than four minutes to clear security, and trains from a new station nearby would get them to central London in an hour.The airport is owned by the Stobart Group, the trucking firm, which paid £21million for it in 2008.It has invested £60million on a new control tower, a runway extension, a new terminal building due to be finished this autumn and the railway station. A new hotel is due to open next year.Catherine Lynn, easyJet's customer and revenue director, said: 'In summer 2012 we’re expecting to see huge demand from passengers right around Europe to come to London.