London Biggin Hill-based Castle Air has taken delivery of a Leonardo A109S helicopter which will be available for charter. The operator repainted the aircraft and installed a fresh interior. Sales director Barry Chalmers says: “We have about 14 helicopters of this type in the fleet at present. The charter market in London is becoming a lot busier and people are demanding newer aircraft with higher quality interior and trim. We made a commercial decision to do a complete refurbishment, and in the south east of the UK we now have 12 units available.”

Castle Air has been working alongside Biggin Hill to develop the London Heli Shuttle, which is able to transport passengers from Biggin Hill to Battersea in six minutes. The venture has become popular and since it was set up two years ago more than a thousand shuttles have taken place. Stansted, Luton and Farnborough to Battersea are also offered by the scheme.

Maintenance also features heavily for the company, as Chalmers explains: “We are a Leonardo service centre and trained in the A109, AW139 and AW169 models. That keeps us extremely busy on the engineering front, and the sales is another massive part of our business. We always keep a large inventory of sales aircraft in stock and we buy and sell one or two a month on average. Charter is actually a relatively small percentage of our core business.”

Castle Air was founded almost 40 years ago and its head office is at Liskeard in Cornwall. It has been stationed at Biggin for the last four years. “We have been associated with Agusta (now Leonardo) for 30 years, have seen the development of what was the AgustaWestland helicopter and understand the brand in-depth,” says Chalmers. “We are confident we understand it better than anyone else in Europe. We support the aircraft well from an engineering, management and sales perspective. We have looked at exploring other brands but ultimately this is the brand we know and have built a strong rapport with.”