This is Biggin Hill Airport's time to shine, according to airport business development director Robert Walters, and several recent changes bear that out. Among them are the recent extension of operating hours being key in bringing more investment by Bombardier Business Aircraft, and the Castle Aviation AW109 helishuttle, meaning London Battersea Heliport (which opens at 7 a.m. and closes at 10:45 p.m.) is only a six-minute flight away.
The extended operating hours means Biggin is open until 10 p.m. weekends and 11 p.m weekdays, allowing passengers to take the helishuttle after a working day and dinner, and be airborne by 11 p.m. One year after the longer operating hours were introduced, the airport has seen monthly movements increase, said marketing manager Andy Patsalides. According to WingX Advance, movements increased 17.6 percent in the year to the end of March, whereas the average increase for other London airports was only 2.3 percent (Farnborough recorded 11.3 percent). Biggin now accounts for 15.3 percent of London business aviation traffic, with 12,736 movements to the end of March 2018. That places it third ahead of Stansted (10.5 percent) but behind Luton (28.5 percent) and Farnborough (24.7 percent).
Biggin (Booth U123) has a seemingly continuous pipeline of development projects. “We got the green light for the aviation training college from the Mayor of London, at the south camp near Bombardier. [London] is putting in £6.5 million and Bromley Council is putting in some too. We’re putting in the land—the total is around £11 million. We hope it will open in first-quarter 2020.”
The new 56-room, four-star hotel for crew and engineers has also been approved on the airport property. It will be located next to the Signature FBO. Meanwhile, this summer Biggin will get a GPS instrument approach to Runway 03 for the first time.
Walters said the airport wants interested businesses to get in touch, particularly MROs and manufacturing companies, as the airport has plenty of room (500 acres) for new hangars and facilities. The number of home-based jets has increased from 27 to around 60 in three years, creating a greater pool of potential clients for service providers.
The next infrastructure project and one that will be very visible to all is to “transform the terminal and tower over the next two years,” but the distinctive tower-on-terminal configuration will be replicated, said Walters. Also, the prefabricated buildings currently next to the tower will be replaced with another hangar, with the offices now being available in the large hangar that has just been built. When AIN visited that hangar earlier this month, there was plenty of space even though it was playing host to a G650, G400, Falcon 7X, Embraer Legacy 650, Bae 146, Challenger 300, PC-12, and Cirrus Vision Jet (the first in the UK).
As Biggin enlarges its share of the business aviation market and the airliner-congested airports start to lose business aviation business, Walters and his team believe there is far more potential. He pointed to the reliever airport model in the U.S.—such as the success of Teterboro in the New York City area—that Biggin Hill's management team has for several years used to persuade UK politicians that a similar model can work for London.
Yet Walters said Biggin Hill and Farnborough Airport are not about to compete each other out of existence, either; “We are not going to race to the bottom on price. And Farnborough might be ahead of us on infrastructure, but Biggin is investing heavily and is unrecognizable compared to five years ago. And it will be unrecognizable again in another five years.”
The only cloud on the horizon recently has been the impending loss of ab initio and circuit training for pilots at the airport, meaning the three flying schools at the airport will have to find new homes, having been given six months’ notice in February. Walters pointed out that the airport is increasingly busy with heavier traffic, so it is becoming a less and less suitable environment for training. In addition, much training is now done at dedicated facilities overseas, where the weather is more suitable.