London Stapleford and Fairoaks
 

Good morning , i am looking at some options for air travel for a small company i own. Most of my staff are based in the City,Docklands with others in South west London and Essex.

Our clients are located mainly in Carlisle , Paris ( Le Bourget Airport ) and Bern-Belp

Stapleford is 20 mins from some of my staff is based and likewise in Fairoaks

For these missions we're in advanced talks with a company about buying flight hours for a King Air , despite these airports being 20-25 mins from most of my staff my concerns are that the runways 1000m and 800m are too short and i don't think these airports have an ILS approach which would be important especially for early morning fog.

For Luton and Stansted we don't see the benefits outweighing the cost at this moment. For London City we believe this is out of scope aswell. If Stapleford and Fairoaks are not ideal we will consider Luton , Stansted and probably Biggin Hill or Cambridge.

Questions

Is it safe for a King Air to operate out of Fairoaks ( 800m ) and Stapleford ( 1000 m) ? is it legal ? balanced?

Would you recommend the other more larger airports?

Is the King Air the right plane for the mission? ( typically 4-8 passengers )

Alternative Questions

We noticed London Executive Aviation operate from Stapleford i've been told that that they can't carry passengers to/from Stapleford does anyone have information on this? as we may consider chartering from them.

Thank you

Nathan.

Hi Nathan,

Synergy Aviation (Synergy Aviation | Private Aircraft Charter & Management) operate King Air 200's out of Fairoaks on commercial charter almost every day of the week - fully legally! Whilst neither Stapleford nor Fairoaks have ILS approaches, it doesn't really impact operations as much as you may think. Richard in Commercial would be happy to speak to you! 01276 485747

I believe (though am happy to be corrected) that LEA (Luxaviation UK) no longer operate King Airs. And I'm not convinced Stapleford is used for commercial flights either.

And it may not be relevant to a short term decision but there is a serious effort to close Fairoaks for (extremely ) lucrative housing development

According to this

GINFO Search Results

they still operate at least one Kingair. A phone call would be the easiest way to find out

Nathan, surely the company that you are considering chartering the king air from will be able to advise you on safe operations. Are you chartering from a reputable company with an AOC? Frankly, your (first) post contains a number of incongruities that make it sound like the whole agenda is not being disclosed or is a fishing expedition. I take it you don't live under the stapleford climb-out?

Nathan,

Because you're a new member, it's not possible to send you a PM, but if you can post some contact details, I can give you a professional perspective on the hazards and benefits of the operation you've mentioned.

Good morning all,

Thanks for the responses, i'll endeavor to respond to the advice/feedback later in the afternoon.

King Air probably most appropriate, but there are a handful of Piper Navajos, Cessna Conquests, Golden Eagles etc. still around but with Avgas prices as they are, not much in it.

Victormikecharlie
 

Hi Nathan
I can also recommend Zephyr Aviation. They have a very nice and fast KingAir 200. They are really excellent AOC operators in addition to the fact that they have 60 + years of flying heritage and their own Long Runway. Close to High Wycombe which although not the closest for you, is 24/7. You want to contact Kate or Andy (ex RAF drive). I'm sure they would be happy to give the very best advise.
Cheers VMC

Apologizes for the late reply .

We have until the end of Q2 ( June ) to arrange the travel plans. We're looking at a 2-3 year plan for the current travel plans then if company growth matches our projection we expect to upgrade to something like a CJ2 or Premier1A to reach destinations further afield as a result we will be monitoring Fairoaks as the potential airfield closure could affect our plans.

Furthermore it seems only right to contact synergy aviation hopefully we can establish the cost involve in diverting to an ILS equipped airfield. We wil also consider Zephyr Aviation.

The company we was going to buy flight hours from is postponed due to the owner looking to sell the aircraft.

The Cessna Conquest equipped with the latest Garmin's and a comfortable cabin is not a bad choice but that's if they're still flying around at the moment, this aircraft is not in our plans currently.

Nathan

it's fine to consider the cost of a diversion.. but do not EVER make the mistake of miscalculating the mistake of NOT making the diversion = those are the loved ones of your family! Flying is not cheap and the operators that are the cheapest are the ones you should avoid. Lessons hard learned by some people - often the ones that has a lot of money, but lost the ones they loved. Good luck.

Fairoaks is not that far from Farnborough and Blackbushe if the dreaded application to close Fairoaks was successful. Both have everything needed to support a King Air or CJ2/Premier 1 operation.

FWIW I was chatting at the weekend with a friend who lives in a part of Chobham that is very adjacent to Fairoaks and he says that almost without exception the locals of Chobham and Ottershaw are opposed to the closure of Fairoaks. Let's hope they manage to keep it open.

Frankly, I wouldn't worry to much about perf calcs being within limits for the runways you're suggesting. It's not worth an AOC operating outside those limits as it would mean ****loads of trouble and possibly loss of their AOC if they were caught not playing by the rules.

Hi Nathan,

How many hours / trips a year do you expect to fly?

Sad that this discussion never reached a worthwhile conclusion...

Fairoaks has IFR departure/arrival procedures using Farnborough ATC to access the airways system outbound and inbound, Farnborough will provide service until the airfield is in sight.
Synergy very rarely (in my experience) have to divert elsewhere due to weather.

Apologizes for the late reply as the responses to my query were very insightful indeed.

In the end I looked elsewhere , after contacting a few brokers i/we went with a sort of JetCard scheme not one but two both with the a decent amount of flying hours per year on both, sometimes we need to be in two places at once and with same day availability for 96% of the year these seemed to be suitable

Thanks for the help , Trips that took all day can now be done in the same morning...