Battle for the skies over Glouce
Almost all eyes might turn to Prestbury during the Cheltenham Festival, but aviation enthusiasts will be looking to the skies above Gloucestershire, as they become the busiest in the country. During the week-long festival of all things jump racing, comings and goings at the Staverton’s air field between Gloucester and Cheltenham go off the scale, as racegoers touch down in the county. GFirst LEP’s recent investment will have put the airport on the radar of others as a place with business potential yet to exploit. But a short flight across the other side of the Cotswolds – almost falling off the very edge of the county into Wiltshire – Cotswold Airport is fuelling up to grow even faster. Stealth-like, it is repositioning itself to welcome an extra – wait for it – 200 additional corporate jets and maybe a few more airliners over the entire year.
These are more than plans. “Corporate jet movements are on the increase and planned to significantly increase towards the end of this year,” said a spokesman for the airport. And yes, you read correctly – airliners. Again, aviation fans will know this is not about passenger flights. The former home of the Red Arrows also breaks major aircraft from around the world. A Boeing 777-200LR widebody plane powered by GE Aviation GE90-110B engines (retired from Etihad Airways) is one of the most recent additions to the specialist breakers yard. High profile as it might be,Air Salvage International (the on-site business performs the dismantling operations) only accounts for about 0.7 per cent of our annual movements. Generally, the airport receives about 32,000 movements a year (movements being industry speak for arrivals or departures). The bulk of these are corporate jets
The widest range of business mobile phone tariffs and handsets right at your fingertips
32 | February 2019 | www. punchline-gloucester .com
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online