London Biggin Hill might not be the first thing that springs to mind when discussing the UK’s airport scene.
Nestled to the south of Greater London, the hub rests on a small hilltop east of Bromley, concealed by nearby woodland and difficult to spot from the surrounding roads.
Its offering is modest compared to the likes of Heathrow and Gatwick, with flights for fare-paying passengers not regularly permitted from its single landing strip.
But it is an airport steeped in history. Go back 80 years and Biggin Hill was playing a pivotal role as one of the RAF’s principal fighter bases protecting London and the South East from the German Luftwaffe. Some 453 of Biggin Hill’s aircrew died over the course of the Second World War, but it was responsible for bringing down 1,400 hostile aircraft.
A plane takes-off from Biggin Hill airport, overlooking London
Today, life at the hub is somewhat different. Biggin Hill now stakes its claim as one of the UK’s primary hubs for private jet travel and business aviation, facilitating tens of thousands of corporate trips each year.
“We’re right in the sweet spot,” chief executive David Winstanley says, chatting in one of the airport’s main hangars. “We will only ever be a business aviation airport or a general aviation airport.”
Winstanley, a veteran aviation executive, was appointed CEO of London Biggin Hill in 2019, following a stint as chief operating officer of Birmingham Airport.
Despite its modest size, he is bullish about its contribution to the UK economy. “We are a catalyst, a magnet, for inward investment. We generate real value that can be measured and we generate jobs… well-paid jobs for local people.”
His goal is to develop the airport’s “ecosystem,” whether that be growing the number of trips to the likes of Zurich and Nice, expanding the number of flying clubs for pilot trainees, or attracting young men and women into the aviation industry.
“We are short on engineers, so we’re doing a lot of work with Bombardier to set up an aviation technical college here, providing engineers with accomodation so [those] who might not be able to afford to move down can live here for four days on their shift.”
London Biggin Hill plays host to a number of companies in the private jet and wider aviation sector. Bombardier, the Canadian aircraft manufacturer, has invested £60m in its European headquarters at the airport, and is planning further investments.
Covid-19 prompted a boom in the number of private jet flights, as rich travellers and business elites sought to avoid major airports. Despite some tail-off over the last year or so, that boom has continued. There have been over 200,000 private jet flights to and from London airports since 2019, according to data shared with City A.M. by Flightradar24.
“We are way above pre-Covid levels now, we have been in 2022, 23 and 24,” Winstanley says.
Amid multi-billion projects at the likes of Heathrow, Gatwick and City Airport, it begs the question, could London see another bid for an extra runway?
“No,” says Winstanley. “I’ve got residents, I’ve got local politicans, so let’s be clear, to be successful and to grow… we don’t need a longer runway, we don’t need a second runway.”
That’s not to say the hub isn’t looking to expand though. “Virtually all of the expansion we’re looking at is within the existing airfield boundary,” the aviation boss explains.
There are two other projects on land owned by the airport but outside its fences. One, a 20 megawatt solar farm, and the other, a 60-acre site built purely for “sustainable aviation” developments.
What does that mean? While plans are not firm yet, they could entail hydrogen power, or even eVTOLs, the futuristic vehicles which have been dubbed ‘flying taxis.’
Winstanley is remarkably optimistic about eVTOLs, despite the tech still being at the very early stages of development. He pictures a vastly changed landscape for urban air transport in London in the coming decades, where two to three seater, virtually silent, airborne taxis jet passengers from nearby airports to Victoria and Kings Cross Station.
“We need to be ahead of the game because if we’re not, it will be developed in Paris, it will be developed in Berlin, and we’ve been at the forefront of eVTOL development.” It would be a shame, he says, if that progress does not bear fruit.
‘I want to have my cake and eat it’
But despite his hopes for new renewable technology, Winstanley can’t get away from the environmental implications of private jet travel.
Research by the Communications Earth and Environment journal in early November found carbon dioxide emissions from private jets soared almost 50 per cent over the last four years, as wealthy flyers splashed out following the pandemic. The most frequent of those flyers generated annual emissions that were hundreds of times higher than the average person’s total carbon footprint.
Decarbonising the aviation industry has been a key pillar of this month’s COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan. Many airlines have hauled in record profit over the last two years amid soaring demand for travel, while in the UK, there are long-running scraps over anything from airport expansion to aviation taxes.
As part of the Autumn Budget, Rachel Reeves announced a 50 per cent increase in Air Passenger Duty (APD) for private jet flyers. Winstanley did not wish to comment on the policy itself, but he believes environmental targets can be hit without constraining the industry.
“I don’t think growth and protecting the environment are mutually exclusive. With growth comes investment, investment allows us to innovate – turning the tap off means… we are going to affect the very innovation we are trying to grow.”
“Naively,” he says, “I want to have my cake and eat it.”
Whether the aviation executive can achieve this goal is shaky at best. Airlines have heaped praise on Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), a biofuel they claim is the key to decarbonising, and big players including Easyjet, Rolls-Royce and Airbus have put their weight behind hydrogen.
However, both fuels are still hugely expensive and years away from being rolled out widely – so-called flying taxis even more so. Winstanley concedes that cost is “still the biggest blocker” to the uptake of hydrogen and SAF, but believes it is wrong to see “one silver bullet anywhere” for the decarbonisation mission.
“It has to be biofuels, it has to be more electric vehicles and equipment in use on the airport, it needs to be sustainable development when we’re building infrastructure.”
What really keeps his section of the market ticking though, is the belief private jets massively increase business productivity.
“The market’s matured over the past I would say 10 years… for lots of reasons,” he reflects. “Larger organisations [are] realising that flying six corporates on a business jet to Zurich can actually be far more cost effective than sending the same six people driving to Heathrow, queueing up through security, climbing through the shops.”
“In business aviation they can choose when they fly, who they fly with, when they depart, when they land, so they can gear that to the way their business clock moves.”
Overall, London Biggin Hill put around £200m into the UK economy in 2023, according to a report by the consultancy Lichfields, and supported around 2,692 full-time jobs. It is a modest figure when compared to Heathrow, Gatwick and other major London airports. But for every 1,000 of its business air traffic movements, around 88 jobs are supported and around £6.74m in GVA generated.
And for those City execs relying on quick trips abroad to settle deals, meet clients and keep London’s business scene ticking over, the value of the hub is difficult to understate.
The big question, though, remains how it will crack the sustainability conundrum. As with the rest of the sector, that remains to be seen.