Empty leg flights from London Biggin Hill Airport

Biggin Hill sits inside the M25 in the London Borough of Bromley, twelve miles from Canary Wharf and fifteen from the centre. Apart from London City, which accepts only aircraft approved for its steep approach, no other business aviation field is this close to the east side of the capital. It takes no scheduled traffic at all, it needs no runway slot, and a helicopter from the apron reaches the London Heliport at Battersea in about six minutes.

For repositioning sectors it has an advantage most other London airports lack. Bombardier's service centre here is the largest business jet maintenance facility in the United Kingdom, and aircraft coming in for work fly in empty and leave empty. That produces sectors in months when the holiday market has gone quiet.

Empty legs at Biggin Hill right now

Sectors are released through the day and the good ones go quickly. If no current sector matches your plan, send us the route and the window you can travel in, and we will contact you when something does, including movements that never reach a public list.

Departing from London Biggin Hill

Arriving into London Biggin Hill

Where Biggin Hill sectors come from

Three things shape repositioning here, and only one of them is seasonal.

The corridors that produce sectors here

Traffic concentrates on a short list of routes, and those are where repositioning flights turn up. If your trip follows one of these corridors the odds are good, and if it does not, a standard charter is usually faster than waiting.

The airport in detail

Two private terminals

Biggin Hill offers a choice of two full service handlers, which is worth something on a busy morning, and both have direct access to the ramp.

On an empty leg the choice is not yours: the sector belongs to the operator and the operator has its own arrangement with a handler. Which one you get is confirmed in the flight brief, along with the address, the gate to use and the crew contact.

What the terminal is actually like

People who have never flown privately usually ask the same question: what happens between arriving at the airport and sitting on the aircraft. At Biggin Hill the honest answer is that there is very little of it, whichever terminal your operator uses.

Fifteen to twenty minutes before departure is enough for a domestic sector, twenty to thirty for an international one. If you arrive earlier than that, the lounge is a pleasant place to be, which is not something anybody says about an airline terminal.

Six minutes to central London

This is the reason a good number of clients pick Biggin Hill over anywhere else. A twin engine helicopter lifts from the apron and lands at the London Heliport in Battersea about six minutes later.

It is arranged alongside the flight rather than separately, and it changes the arithmetic of the whole trip. A road transfer from Biggin Hill into the City takes forty to seventy minutes depending on the hour, and into the West End longer. The helicopter removes most of it, and on a Friday evening in summer that saving is not marginal.

Where it makes least sense is Kent and the south east, because from there the car is already quick. Where it makes most sense is any arrival where somebody is waiting for you at a fixed time in the centre of London.

How fast you can actually leave

Biggin Hill has a reputation for short notice departures and it is deserved, but it is worth knowing what the clock is really waiting on. The runway is not the constraint here, because there is no slot to secure. Three other things are.

Put together, three to four hours from a phone call to wheels up is realistic here on a normal day, and it can be considerably less when an aircraft and crew happen to be standing by. That is not a promise; it is what the constraints allow.

What the ground costs

Biggin Hill usually costs less on the ground than Farnborough, the best known dedicated business aviation field near London. It is not trying to beat Farnborough on the terminal, and it does not price as though it were.

As at any airport, none of these charges reaches you separately on an empty leg, because they come with the sector. The helicopter is the exception and is quoted on its own. It matters when you are comparing charter quotes, and it is a real reason a Biggin Hill departure can undercut the same aircraft out of Farnborough.

Getting into London

Biggin Hill is the obvious choice for the City, Canary Wharf, south east London and Kent, and the wrong one if you are heading west. These are typical off peak times.

There is no railway station at the airport. The nearest stations, such as Orpington and Bromley South, are a car ride away, and with luggage and a waiting driver nobody takes that route. In practice the choice is the car or the helicopter.

Empty leg calendar for Biggin Hill, month by month

Biggin Hill has a calendar most other London fields do not have, because many of its movements are driven by maintenance rather than by holidays. That gives it empty sectors in months when most other fields are quiet.

September, October, March and April are the months to aim for. November and January look unpromising on paper and are worth watching anyway, because the maintenance ferries that most other London fields do not have keep sectors on the board through the winter.

Three situations, three answers

Travelling with a dog or a cat

Biggin Hill is well set up for animals, and the advantage is practical rather than promotional. The airport runs its own pet handling service, SkyPets, with a dedicated team and pet travel advice, so the arrival is prepared by people who specialise in it rather than improvised on the day.

Two practical points. The airport needs to be told about an arriving animal, and to have all its paperwork, at least twenty four hours before it lands, so this belongs in the first conversation and not the last. And the underlying rules do not change: for an arrival into Great Britain the operator has to hold the relevant approval to carry animals and, unless the flight comes from Ireland, the route has to be an approved one, which is checked for every booking. Leaving the country, the requirements are those of your destination.

Questions about flying from Biggin Hill

Call +44 7857 574938, message the same number on WhatsApp, or write to flight@empty-leg.co.uk. We are based at London Luton and we place sectors into Biggin Hill every week.