For second-tier airports in southeast England, the airlines’ summer season has begun with a bonanza of new routes.

Luton has gained yet another major airline – Jet2 – and now looks like the most competitive airport in the UK, if not Europe. The Bedfordshire airport is home to easyJet; the main British base for Wizz Air; an important Ryanair base; and now the fourth big player, Jet2, is lining up for departure.

Gatwick gets a trio of Arabian destinations: Jeddah and Neom Bay in Saudi Arabia, plus Bahrain. It also has the first UK scheduled link to the Cape Verde Islands, with easyJet flying to Sal.

Stansted wins some new players. With Ryanair such a huge customer, the Essex airport desperately needs some diversity: Air Algerie will fly to Algiers and Transavia to Rotterdam.

But the most dramatic changes are further south in Essex: at Southend-on-Sea.

Southend becomes part of the mix only when slots are scarce elsewhere. While it has an excellent three-trains-per-hour railway station a couple of minutes’ walk from the terminal, Southend shares the catchment problem common to coastal airports: draw a circle with the airport at the centre, and roughly half of it will be in the sea.

The resort’s airport was almost wiped out by the Covid pandemic. During any aviation downturn – and that was the worst in history – airlines retreat to their main hubs. Ryanair to Stansted, easyJet to Gatwick, Wizz Air to Luton. Adventures in marginal airports tend to come to a swift halt.

Now, though, easyJet is back with three “based” aircraft – which will fly off 61 times a week on 20 different routes, including the Canaries combo of Gran Canaria and Tenerife; Marrakech and Enfidha in North Africa; the usual Turkish suspects, Antalya and Dalaman; and always alluring Malta.

Kenton Jarvis, easyJet’s chief executive, said: “This will enable us to serve many more UK consumers providing great value and more choice.”

The UK excels at exporting tourists: for the past 75 years the British travel industry has flourished by taking us to locations agreeably closer to the equator.

Since Vladimir Raitz launched the first Horizon holiday from Gatwick to Corsica in 1950, our appetite for the Mediterranean and beyond has proved insatiable.

Yet we are not so good at importing visitors. Indeed, from 2 April any foreigner who does not have the fortune to be Irish must invest £10 (increasing to £16 a week later) in an electronic travel authorisation – ETA.

At the same time, coastal communities such as Southend are struggling to attract tourists. Could the Essex town capitalise on its newfound connectivity?

Yes, says Bayo Alaba, MP for Southend East and Rochford – the constituency that wraps around the airport.

“People should come to Southend for the fact that we have eight beaches,” he told me. It’s a natural asset of ours that most communities don’t have.

“We have the Cliff Pavilion, we have the Palace Theatre, we have some amazing iconic buildings.

“It’s not just about the seaside and tourism, it’s also about the history and nature. We have Foulness Island, the fourth largest off the coast of England.

“Also, if you go inland, you discover we have some medieval market towns and villages as well.

“People need to come here and they’ll they’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

One big advantage of accessing Southend is that the gardens begin where the airport ends, and you can breeze into town in about half an hour – or spend seven minutes on the train. I have walked from Gatwick into Crawley, from Luton airport into the town and even from Stansted to Bishop’s Stortford: a stroll to the seaside in Southend is far more pleasurable.

Besides Adventure Island – not an actual island, but a theme park – a real highlight are the murals that now decorate every spare wall in the centre. Street art can help transform a location – as can a small and friendly airport.