There are so many threads referencing shoulder charges at Biggin (including several from me) that I thought it worth a new thread to say that they have been removed.
So operation hours on weekdays are 6:30 – 23:00 (08:00-22:00 weekends and holidays) Local with no penalty for operating at any time within those hours.
This is great news for those operating GA into London.
What are shoulder charges?
They are charges before or after certain hours. For example after 9pm local they charged another £150 or so.
Thread title edited.
With the only caveat being that aircraft with a MTOW <1700kg have to wait until 07:00 local for arrivals & departures 
TimR wrote:
With the only caveat being that aircraft with a MTOW <1700kg have to wait until 07:00 local for arrivals & departures
Sorry, yes, I missed that in my excitement. I wonder why?
Maybe because that is part of the anti-small aircraft policy that has also seen the prices rise so steeply?
Well, they upped their prices quite a bit and then removed the out of hours surcharge
Maybe because that is part of the anti-small aircraft policy that has also seen the prices rise so steeply?
It seems so trivial that it makes me think that there must be some logic in the decision.
Well, they upped their prices quite a bit and then removed the out of hours surcharge
Sure, but now landing late in the evening is perfectly feasible. That hasn’t been the case anywhere near London for many years.
Now we have PCL at Fairoaks and affordable fees at Biggin things are looking much better.
One possibility is that they are actually happy to have light GA using the airport.
That would make sense, because frankly any airport that pushes out GA is stupid because nearly all costs are fixed costs so the 50 quid they get goes straight to the bottom line.
But they don’t want schools because they fly circuits “all the time” which make it hard to manage IFR (esp. bizjet) traffic. Normally this is managed by asking base leg traffic to orbit when there is an IFR arrival, but there is a certain amount of nervousness in ATC about this, especially since the Southend fatal crash showed that clearly some students get sent out solo before they can fly an orbit. Hence Biggin booted out the schools.
I guess the fact that there are some very expensive residential properties on downwind has nothing to do with booting out the circuit bashers.
