London Oxford Airport (LOA) reports that its traffic has risen 8.3 percent in the last quarter, an encouraging sign following the European business aviation peak in 2012 and a figure that places it in the top 10 of recent growth across European airports over the same period. Until the recent uptick, traffic at Oxford had remained steady, even though UK business aviation flights slumped 2.5 percent after 2012, and by 2 percent across Europe as a whole. The increase in traffic was recorded despite the unfortunate demise of Oxford-based Air Med, an air ambulance operator.
Handling more than 8,000 passengers per year, London Oxford has also seen an increase in the number of large jets operating into the airfield. While Citation Excels and Hawker jets still lead the movements table, those by Challengers, Globals and Falcons are on the rise. LOA’s business destinations are dominated by UK domestic airports (40 percent) and other EU airports (55 percent), but those in the Middle East and North America are showing an increase.
Oxford has recently welcomed several new tenants to the airfield, including Excellence Aviation, a Bombardier MRO specialist; Volare Aviation (aircraft sales); Take Flight (private pilot training and GA fractional); and Oxford Aviation Club, a jet membership service expected to begin operations with Embraer Legacys.
On April 1, training company Airways Aviation also opened a new global headquarters at Oxford, as well as a training academy operating Diamond DA42 twin-engine piston aircraft for career pilot training, with the initial single-engine portion of training being undertaken on Diamond DA20s at Huesca in Spain. The airfield is also home to CAE’s Oxford Aviation Academy.
Among Oxford’s other major tenants is Gama Aviation, which merged with Oxford-based Hangar 8, adding significant large-jet maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) capability. The business blending process began at the start of last year, and is now complete. The enlarged Gama continues on both organic and acquisitive growth strategies, seeking to add more aircraft types to its authorized MRO portfolio and to expand its AOG (aircraft on ground) response capability. The Oxford base figures prominently in these plans.
London Oxford Airport is also home to Airbus Helicopters UK, which performs a wide range of installation and maintenance work for Airbus rotary-wing products throughout the country, serving private, commercial and government customers. A major task is to support 75 percent of the UK’s police helicopters, as well as those doing powerline survey and EMS work. The Oxford facility includes a 30-strong design team handling special installations and customization requests.
Significant investment has been made in airport infrastructure in recent times, including the installation of a state-of-the-art Thales radar three years ago that has extended its operations to provide a radar service seven days per week. The Oxfordjet FBO is one of the first in the UK to receive IS-BAH accreditation, and it has also been trained, audited and accredited by Gulfstream for ground handling and servicing. The departures area now has the latest in X-ray screening systems, and the airport has acquired a de-icing system that can handle 737/A320-size aircraft.
Planned for implementation over 2016/17 are the installation of a GPS-based LPV200 performance-based navigation system at both ends of the runway, and full LED airfield lighting for reduced operating minimums. The airfield intends to become fully EASA-compliant in terms of safety-management and quality systems, and plans to extend its operating hours from the current 06:30/22:30 to 06:00/midnight. Another initiative being examined is to introduce a back-up reciprocal radar feed from nearby RAF Brize Norton, and wide-area multilateration.
Two current developments could offer further opportunities for London Oxford and other small regional airports. The advent of the Bombardier C-Series, able to operate from 4,000-ft runways, opens up Oxford’s 5,223-ft fully grooved runway to airline operations by jets, which could include non-stop London-New York all-business class flights. The most recent effort to launch commercial flights from Oxford with turboprops foundered for external reasons, although it recorded encouragingly high load factors.
A more prosaic opportunity will come with the European approval to operate single-engine aircraft on commercial operations in instrument meteorological conditions, expected to begin next year. Air taxi and business shuttle operations using aircraft such as the Cessna Caravan and Pilatus PC-12 are expected to increase significantly as a result.
Using single-engine aircraft offers a significant cost reduction over twins, and allows access to a much wider range of airfields. Given the UK’s congested roads and heavily London-centric rail network, air taxi services from airfields such as Oxford to other UK destinations could offer considerable time-savings for businesses, as well as cost-savings over rail travel.