On September 1, a brand new contract began between London Executive Aviation (LEA) and Chrysalis Radio, bringing ‘The Sky Patrol’ to breakfast show listeners across the London area from a Piper Seneca PA-34. The concept of ‘The Sky Patrol’ is to provide up-to-date and detailed traffic information from the air, reporting problems on the roads as they happen.

EBAN spoke to Jonathan Richards, editorial director of Network News, LBC and Heart 106.2 at Chrysalis Radio. He told us about this new service. “We operated a Sky Patrol previously for Heart 106.2, one of London’s top music stations.

“Following our purchase of LBC 97.3 and LBC News 1152,” he said, “we had the opportunity to ‘club together’ with Heart 106.2 and put up a new Sky Patrol which could provide reports for all three stations. I believe that it was a sound editorial and economic solution.”\r

LEA and LBC first collaborated on an airborne travel service back in 1990. We spoke to managing director of LEA George Galanopoulos to find out more about this renewed alliance.

“LEA previously had a contract with LBC, which was taken over by another service provider. We carried on working for them until last December when the contract expired. We’ve been doing this kind of thing since 1999, more or less continuously. It’s only been in the last nine months that we haven’t done it.

“We used to fly for LBC and then we flew for various other radio stations, including Heart,” he said, “and that was done through a service provider — they would take the broadcasts and distribute them to various radio stations.”

Richards explained why they were keen to sign a new contract: “LEA’s base at Stapleford was very convenient and I’ve personally been really impressed with both their set-up and the professionalism of the staff there,” he said.

“Clearly from an image and editorial point of view, airborne travel reporting in a busy city such as London gives us an advantage over our competitors and shows our commitment to fast and accurate travel reporting.”

Richards reports that the service is cost-effective too: “In the current economic climate it has to be, and we are fortunate enough to have sponsorship from www.e-sure.com, an internet insurance business.”

Listener feedback has been positive so far. “We obtain feedback from our listeners about the services we run fairly regularly and the response has been very good,” said Richards. “We also use ‘The Sky Patrol’ for client flights and these are a great form of customer PR.”

EBAN reporter Donna Cradock went to Stapleford to experience ‘The Sky Patrol’ first-hand and to get the low-down on the daily operations from the team at LEA and the on-air travel reporter.

We asked travel reporter Georgina Argyrou what she thought of the Seneca aircraft. “From the layperson’s point of view, because I don’t know much about aircraft, it’s fast, it’s agile – it’s just a great aircraft

overall. If there’s an accident or something, we can be there very quickly indeed,” she said.

“And very often we’re the first on the scene when it comes to travel reporting. It has no problem doing those tight turns and circling around,” she added, “I used to go up in a single-engine aircraft and it was very restrictive – we couldn’t really go over the city centre very much.”

Galanopoulos remarked: “From my point of view, it’s economical. It’s a twin-engine aircraft so it can fly anywhere, rather than being restricted with a small single engine. It can be manoeuvred much more easily. It’s a workhorse really.”

The Seneca is approximately 15 years old. Galanopoulos said: “Our fleet all range in age, from 22 years old to brand new models. The Seneca I is economical to run and it’s quite simple and uncomplicated to operate. It has fewer systems; there’s less that can go wrong. It’s very straightforward. We have a back-up aircraft as well, so there’s another one if this one does go wrong.

“All of our other aircraft are a lot larger,” he continued, “so it would have worked out as being far

more expensive. It would have been harder to fly over the city and we wouldn’t have had the benefit of

such good windows! The Seneca has fairly good-sized windows for a twin-engine aircraft.”

Argyrou agreed about the windows. “They do provide a great viewpoint,” she said. “The weather may change soon, but so far, so good. Ask me again in December!”

Argyrou had been working on LBC before Chrysalis purchased the company last year. Richards told us: “Georgina had been reading and writing the news and was looking to ‘spread her wings’ — we’ve been able to help her do this!”

Argyrou told us that she had not done any travel reporting before January of this year, but reports: “It’s been absolutely brilliant, I wasn’t expecting it to be this great!

“If you can imagine that your job is going up in an aircraft, looking at London on a generally beautiful and sunny morning, it’s just totally invigorating,” she continued. “You’re helping people get to work on time. If you can crack the odd joke at times as well, that can help!

“We do reports every 15 minutes. I do two bulletins every 15 minutes and I’m always keeping in touch with the travel centre on the ground and they’re updating me on stuff,” she said. “Then I’m constantly talking

to pilot Graham about where we’re going. There’s usually about four conversations going on at the

same time!” The service is broadcast every 10 minutes on LBC News 1152, an all-news station, Heart 106.2 and LBC 97.3.

Pilot and captain of ‘The Sky Patrol’, LEA’s Graham Foley, has been with the company for nearly three and a half years. He gained his pilot’s licence in 1986 and began flying commercially ten years later. He flew on the previous airborne travel reporting operations from time to time and now loves doing it on a daily basis.

“Doing this job is great – I feel really privileged getting such a good view of London everyday. The Seneca is a lovely aircraft to fly as well, so this job suits me down to the ground — I love it!”

Extending the service beyond traffic reporting is very much on the cards, with the team keen to cover major breaking news stories, as well as national events.

Richards commented: “We used ‘The Sky Patrol’ for the Countryside Alliance march and the May Day protests in London. We even used it for coverage of the London Marathon.”

Argyrou is eager to cover more news stories as they happen. “When we do have ‘action’ news,” she

said, “we’re going to be there in ‘The Sky Patrol’, reporting back on what we can see and explaining exactly what is going on.”

She also reports that they want to go one step further, with interviews from the air. “We want to do some celebrity interviews in the aircraft as well. Taking guests up over London, getting them involved and using

it in our feeds to the station. It would provide something different, it would be a fun novelty feature,”

she concluded.

Argyrou admits that it took her a while to get her bearings: “Everything looks so different from up there. It’s amazing really, getting a bird’s eye view of London – it really is a wonderful sight.”

Since September 1 when the service started, the British weather has been unusually mild and

Foley has his concerns about what will happen when the weather starts to turn.

“Normally you would have to compete against the weather, but it’s been so lovely lately, we simply haven’t had that problem. I can’t even pick an outstanding trip, because each time has been stunning; we’ve been able to see for miles.

“If we do get poor visibility or low cloud, we won’t be able to fly, because we’ve got to stay visual and there are certain limits that we need to stick to in order to be able to go into the Heathrow zone anyway,” he said. “Georgina needs a clear view of the roads. There just wouldn’t be any point in going up to sit on

top of the clouds, even if there was no safety issue.”

The pair did suffer a near miss with an arrival aircraft recently, as Argyrou explained: “We had to bank at a sharp 90 degree angle to avoid it and that was a bit of a shock! My heart has just about recovered!”

It is clear that both LEA and Chrysalis are benefiting immensely from ‘The Sky Patrol’ operations and they have very high hopes for its continued success in the future.

Galanopoulos professed: “Having the service at LEA is excellent. It’s regular work for us, which is good

and it’s also high profile work. It’s fantastic to be associated with LBC and Heart 106.2.”

Richards could not agree more. “We’re delighted here at Chrysalis with the way it’s going. We believe it’s the best service out over London!”