Biggin Hill EGKB

Do anybody know what would be the most convinient way to go to London Heatrow T2?

Quite honestly, hire a minicab… I suggest giving Addison Lee a call. It will cost you about £100 and take about 1.5 hours.

Otherwise, it can be done on public transport for £29ish…

• Walk to the bus stop by the roundabout just down from Rizonjet
• Take the 320 bus to Bromley South (22 stops)
• Take a train to Victoria
• Take a circle line to Paddington
• Hop on the Heathrow express

In theory this takes 108 minutes (I’ll admit to using citymapper to figure this out).

Having done the “Biggin taxi ride” many times, it’s a fun observation that Biggin could double its landing fees and nobody would notice, because everybody landing there spends £100 getting out of there

This is why Biggin don’t want Redhill getting a hard runway (have objected the the planning application). Redhill is close to the transport links and already has ATC, so with a couple of GPS approaches it will be superb.

“QFE is….” And you have to read it back!

Other than when I am instructing and have to teach this, my standard reply to being given a QFE is “request QNH…”

Rizon… you have too much money! Great place, though!

Just an update on Biggin Hill’s new opening hours. Closes 2300 local on weekdays. This makes it an extremely useful destination or diversion airport.

BUT see the current notam:

EGKB (BIGGIN HILL)

FOR OPERATIONAL REASONS THE AD WILL BE CLOSED TO ALL PISTON
ENGINE ACFT TYPES, ARRIVING OR DEPARTING AFTER 1800Z ON SAT, SUN
AND BANK HOLIDAYS. COMMANDERS OF PISTON ENGINE ACFT TYPES SHOULD
NOT PLAN TO OPERATE AT AD DURING THESE TIMES. : NOTAM EG/C4349/17

So, at weekends etc, no piston ops after 1800 UTC. I wonder why?

HOWEVER there is another sting. I have just phoned them up to check this. During the following times

MON-FRI 6:30-7:30 local and 21:00-23:00 local
Weekends 20:00-23:00 local

there is a £150 surcharge.

It turns out I missed the £150 by not many minutes 2 days ago

So Biggin Hill has done something like what Southend EGMC (H24 airport) have done: a £200 surcharge after 22:00 local (not verified this recently).

Cobalt wrote:

Other than when I am instructing and have to teach this, my standard reply to being given a QFE is “request QNH…”

Missed this earlier post.

Absolutely. QNH is the standard. If I wanted a QFE I would have asked for it.

There is a gradual attrition of piston operations at Biggin. They have curtailed circuit traffic and have announced that it will end entirely soon, they have said that anyone participating in Wingly will be thrown off the airfield, they have the 7pm curfew on piston aircraft on weekends etc.

I fear that it is being turned from the best GA field in the country into another Farnborough. I can understand why they are doing it from a commercial point of view, but I agree that if that is their direction of travel, it was rather dog-in-the-mangerish to object to Redhill’s plans.

they have said that anyone participating in Wingly will be thrown off the airfield,

What on earth is that all about?

I actually don’t understand the commercial thinking, because almost all airport costs are fixed costs so the £30 they got from me (actually £50+ including parking) goes straight to the bottom line – it’s free money. This is true for any airport which is below capacity, and Biggin is deffo below ATC and runway capacity. Maybe they are up against a Planning restriction on # of movements?

Yes; blocking Redhill’s plans is a horrible example of the dog-eat-dog behaviour in GA. They are doing it because Redhill already has ATC so could put in an IAP and take some of the traffic which Biggin is pushing out.

But maybe Biggin wants to keep piston traffic, but not training traffic (circuits)? The vast majority of the farm strip scene bans circuits due to noise, but they also mess up IFR traffic which normally obviously has to be given priority but you can’t always ask a pilot flying circuits to orbit on base (some might get killed, like the one at Southend).

I got really good service the other day, on the tarmac and in the office, and again collecting the plane today, so maybe my para above is not far off. They probably want to keep the “Cirrus crowd” and the various variants of it.

Blocking Wingly (how would they detect it? – presumably they will monitor the site for anyone advertising flights from Biggin) is the same thing as much of the farm strip scene blocking syndicates (even ones around an ultralight). It is to keep the number of movements down. Also Biggin has a number of AOC operators using it and they always go berserk at any indication of “charter” taking place.

I don’t want to be an apologist for Biggin, but I do understand that the reputational cost of an RA, go around, time in the hold, broken off approach, AirProx or, God forbid a mid-air resulting from an incompetent private pilot might negate all the marginal cost arguments.

Remember that, like Farnborough and Oxford, it is outside controlled airspace. There is little they can to protect themselves against the one-in-a-hundred plonker. That is not to say that GIII pilots cannot plonk big time, but they are lucrative core business, not a marginal revenue generator associated with greater risk.

So far as Wingly goes, the Airport MD met with them and told them that their operation was banned from Biggin. There are two reasons this might be. A perceived safety safety risk of unqualified pilots flying commercial operations and the fact that the MD used to operate an AOC and found it difficult to compete with illegal public transport operations, leaving him with a gut aversion to what he (but not EASA, CAA, Parliament or the Criminal Justice Systen) perceives as illegal charter.

And yes, most people who work at Biggin are lovely, kind and helpful. There is obviously a difference, in all companies, between long term policy and the friendliness of junior staff. Little about one can be gleaned from the other.