David Buckley, director of airport and flight operations for Marshall Aerospace at Cambridge City Airport, has been telling EBAN of the company's plans to become a charter operation in its own right. “In the new year we will introduce Marshall Executive Aviation, which will basically enable clients to charter our company aircraft; the Aztec and particularly the Citation V.

“I will market Cambridge as a London gateway, because the train from here to Liverpool Street only takes 45 minutes. But I don't envisage a time when it will be called London Cambridge!” he joked.

The airport doesn’t currently have a based operator, since Gold Air moved to Biggin Hill. “I don’t really know why the company moved, but maybe it found Biggin Hill had a larger market,” said Buckley. A Gold Air spokesperson confirmed that it had been a lack of hangar space which resulted in the relocation. There are however a number of operators which use the airport. “The racing and business community at Newmarket provides Cambridge with a lot of business, along with passengers travelling to the Cambridge catchment area.”

The company will start promoting itself through brokers and the business community. “Depending upon how successful we are, we would consider expanding on our current fleet. We have a company aircraft which is not currently being fully utilised and a number of company pilots, who we would particularly like to involve,” said Buckley.

Since rebranding itself as Cambridge City Airport the market has generally revolved around short haul scheduled flights and seasonal charter in the summer. “This is what I call a proper airport, rather than an airfield. What we’re doing is no different from London City Airport.

“We get flights from all over the place, including a number of transatlantic. Personally I think we’ve got a better facility than Farnborough, but nobody has ever done any marketing or sales.\r

“On the corporate and executive side, we're planning to put a new passenger terminal in for spring 2004. We will also try and encourage some FBOs, because there are already between 800 and 900 corporate

and executive jet movements a year,” he said.

Meanwhile, Marshall which is also known as a maintenance and overhaul centre for both Citation and Bombardier, has just completed its twentieth Global Express completion.