Harrods Aviation has reopened, following a temporary closure to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all staff. This includes its FBOs at London Luton and London Stansted, engineering services at each base, as well as its helicopter management and charter service Air Harrods.

Paul Norton, managing director comments: “Since the easing in the lockdown scenario here in the UK it has been pleasing to see so many customers returning to our facilities; their trust, understanding and loyalty at these difficult times cannot be praised higher. We have been quite surprised at the number of bookings we have taken from both regular and new operators, especially those operating smaller air taxi type aircraft. The lack of clarity on the 14 day quarantine continues to hinder our long range business, and I look for certainty on this subject in the coming days.”

Commenting on the staffing situation and a change to 'the new normal', Kerry Besgrove, operations director adds: “Staff continue to respond well to the challenges and have adapted well to our new stringent cleaning regime and temperature checks before anybody can enter our buildings. We recently published a comprehensive risk assessment to ensure all visitors and staff can feel safe in our facilities. Whilst this additional work has changed the way in which we work, I have been impressed with the flexibility and willingness of my great team to adapt. There are inevitably challenges that we face, not least of which is finding hotel accommodation for crews. However we have now successfully sourced several options for crew at both bases. COVID-19 adapted ground transportation is also available.”

Due to the fact that Harrods Aviation operates and owns all the equipment required to handle any size of aircraft, it is not restricted by third party availability. The only third party service it has actively looked to outsource has been aircraft cleaning and sanitisation. It has expert, qualified teams on standby for every request in this very specialised and currently important service.