Harriet did a superb job looking after the operators' requirements and Helen and all her ATC team dug out and kept everything flowing.
A few points though:
Silverstone refusing to allow operators who were paying a lot of money to be there to brand their terminals, no signs or flags showing your returning pax where you were apart from a converted oil drum by the door. (In our case with a security operative asleep on it on Saturday)
The refuel crew esp those marshalling aircraft in should have been in hi-viz, the dark Heli-Air shirts were sometimes difficult to see in bright glare, and much as I hate the hi-viz laws they are there and we are required to follow them.
The back track lane was very narrow, and may have been below the legal min width.
There were a lot less aircraft parked than I expected, but I heard a general comment from about ten pilots on Sunday that the standard of marshalling could have been better, the lad who marshalled me knew all the right signals, but tried to park me far closer than was comfortable to a light helicopter. In the past we had the Battersea marshals who are known and trusted by us all, maybe a few of them mixed in, or some training from them would have boosted confidence.
To the air trafficer who sounded tired of pilots asking to back-track on Sunday afternoon, its a PITA to us as well, but it is done for safety, if you read this and would like to PM me I'm quite happy to bore you rigid with performance charts which demonstrate exactly why its' done.
I would be interested to see what the event looked like on the Birmingham, Brize and Luton radars, we used to fly the event transponders off, and certainly most TCAS equipped aircraft this year were switching their units off as you couldn't hear ATC over the bloody bloke shouting "Trafffic, Traffic!"
SND