A Flying Visit!

Accordingly on Thursday 27^th June a group of 16 met in the Hummingbird Restaurant in the airort terminal building before meeting our tour guide Pete Fellows.  After a brief résumé of the history of the airport, the group were given high visibility jackets and taken along a corridor past the now rarely used check-in desk, and customs room and a large (defused) unexploded bomb to the airport museum.

The museum is a cramped room, typically no larger than a small dining room, just big enough to allow the group to enter and stand around a central display table.  There were cupboards and shelves around three sides of the room holding a myriad of display items detailing historical events and personnel involved in the development of flying and the airport.  Looking upwards the group saw nine model planes supported on three beams, each plane having been developed or flew initially from the airport.  Under the window on the only wall without shelves of cupboards was an example of an ejector seat although our guide was unsure of its connection with the airport.

After our guide described various items in the museum the group walked out and along the airport perimeter road past Northbrook College which specialises in aircraft maintenance courses to a hanger full of various helicopters and some small single engine planes typical of those used for aerobatic displays.

The group stood at the hanger opening and watched as the pilots of two helicopters on hardstandings outside the hanger started up their engines and the rotors whirled with increasing speed.

It seems a long time watching them whilst the pilots were waiting clearance to take off before the first flew only a few feet above the ground towards the runway and then along and above the runway before climbing away from the airport.

Once the second helicopter had moved away from the hardstanding, the group was able to walk along the side of the taxi way and view the planes in the various hangers.

There were also rows of planes parked on the taxiways.  Pete Fellows explained that the planes with the registration letter ’G’ on the side were registered in Great Britain, and that the four other letters could be chosen by the owner as long as they had not already been used, and that these could be personalised.

All the time planes were landing or taking off, and Pete Fellows indicated that the number of plane movements at the airport, about 350 daily, was comparable during daylight hours with that of Gatwick.

We made our way passed the rear of the Northbrook College hanger, and were surprised to see a mobile café that was doing a good trade albeit with a fence preventing the customers getting airside.

We saw the emergency services vehicles on standby in hanger C.  The door on the side of the hanger is where pilots have to go to pay their landing fees.  We were reminded that it costs nothing to take off at Brighton City Airport, but a pilot has to land somewhere and thus has to pay landing fees.

The main fire tender inside the hanger, we were informed, will, if not in use at the airport, respond if needed to large fires in the neighbourhood from Worthing to Shoreham.

The group were then taken past further hangers, and one in front of which a plane was being refuelled, before the high visibility jackets were returned to our guide.  We thanked him for the visit, and then made our way back to the Hummingbird Restaurant for lunch.