Flash to bang.....

[jellycopter]

Wondered if any of you biz jet pilots out there working for individuals/company owners could give me an idea of the 'flash to bang' time for a call-out type job. Scenario: sat at home in Blighty watching Coronation Street when the phone rings and you're told you need to be in Nice, or some other European destination ASAP to get his nibs to an important meeting. How long does it take to get the planning, clearances etc done and be en-rout

[Daifly]

If it's a good day, we can have a Lear airborne from one of the London airports in 1 hour. If it's a bad day... actually, we don't have bad days!

Ops set up the flight planning, arrange catering, call out crews.
Pilots drive to airport, sort out fuelling, sort out state of aircraft (if left badly from previous flight landing at 0400...).

If it's Farnborough, LHR or LGW, subject to slots, then 1 hour is fine.

LTN takes a little longer, maybe 1h30m. Stansted 2.

That's assuming there hasn't been a crash like there was this morning - traffic backed up from LHR spur to the M1; now that's a tailback...

[jellycopter]

Daifly, thanks for the reply. You seem to work at a pretty well organised set-up. How does this differ for more private biz-jet type set-ups? Are there 365day / 24 hr ops companies who could do all the leg work for you? Jelly.

[Daifly]

Thanks for the compliment - if you were in here when one's being launched, it's quite a sight! Alright as long as it wasn't busy to begin with!

All, I think I'm correct in saying, UK operated bizjets (i.e. those operated by a charter company, whether private or available for charter) are flight plun (that's a new word for today!) by ops teams in the company.

If you're a one-man band then it depends. Smaller types can be controlled by one pilot and a fax machine; but the planning stage would take longer. Larger types, GIV, CL604 etc tend to be controlled by a company such as Universal, Air Routing or Baseops who have large ops teams to control the aircraft.

Essentially they all do the same job whether company ops teams or third party ones, but it's the same end result.

So in answer to your question, yes, there are 365/24 companies who'll do it for you.

[jellycopter]

Daifly, thanks again!
I'm pretty much interested in the one-man-band operations (C550). Anyone out there able to offer their experiences. Jelly.