Stobart in Olympics air link push for Southend

Southend airport is accelerating plans to be a two-million-a-year passenger airport by the 2012 Olympics with rail links to London that will rival Stansted's.

The Eddie Stobart trucking firm, which bought Southend Airport last year for £21 million, said it will open its own dedicated railway station just north of the Essex seaside town on the line to London by Christmas. Trains will take 49 minutes to Fenchurch Street with connections to the Olympics site.

"The rail connection would put us on comparable timings to Stansted," said Stobart chief executive Andrew Tinkler. "We currently have facilities capable of handling 600,000 passengers. But we are planning to extend the runway to get larger aircraft in andwe would be capable of handling two million passengers a year by 2012. City Airport currently handles around 2.2 million a year."

Stobart in its first full year as a quoted company today reported pre-tax profits of £23.9 million in the year to the end of February. But it said it is cutting the dividend from 8p to 6p to save money as bank lending has dried up.