London City Airport (LCA) is establishing a dedicated business aviation facility, dubbed the London City Airport Jet Centre, to exploit growing demand for business aircraft traffic to the UK capital.
"The situation for business aircraft has become critical at London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports which have heavily squeezed movements, but this has not extinguished demand," says LCA chief executive Richard Gooding. He adds: "We realise this is a profitable business which will complement our existing airline schedule."
The Jet Centre will house VIP lounges, dedicated aircraft stand and parking facilities and is expected to be fully operational early next year.
LCA currently handles 3,000 business aircraft movements, although Gooding expects this number will double "in the next couple of years". He says: "We still have the capacity to expand our apron space when demand increases, as anticipated and eventually expect business aviation to account for 10% of our overall business."
LCA will have sole responsibility for aircraft handling at the airport taking over from Signature Flight Support, which will remain until its contract expires in November. Gooding admits: "As LCA is making the investment we want to maintain hands-on control of the business. Although Inflite [Engineering] will continue to offer line maintenance on site, we are planning to build a dedicated engineering hangar in 2004 and have not ruled out providing this service ourselves."
LCA, renowned for its steep approach and short runway is keen to increase the number of business aircraft types cleared to land on the site. These currently include the Cessna Citation series (excluding the Bravo), Dassault Falcon 50, Raytheon Beech King Air C90 and a number of BAE Systems types including the British Aerospace 146. Dassault is hoping to gain clearance for its Falcon 2000EX and 900EX and Fairchild Dornier for its 328Jet-based Envoy 3.
Source: Flight International
