Mustang Flight

Mustang Flight (by Daniel Boyd, Danny Banks, Jamie Pattison & Chris Smith)

19/10/12

An excellent opportunity to fly on a private jet came up at short notice for the following day, so three screwed-over colleagues later and I'd secured the day off to join Daniel Boyd, Danny Banks (co-owners of NEAM group) and fellow NEAM member Jamie Pattison on the four-seater Blink Cessna 510 Citation Mustang, G-FBKD. As most will be aware, air taxi and private charter operators need to do a lot of positioning flights to collect their clients, therefore they try (but very rarely) sell these flights on the cheap as an 'empty leg', they're usually very expensive but at £300 or £75 each, this one was excellent value for money so Mr Boyd snapped it up. If we'd been chartering the aircraft, the flight would have cost £2300!!

The flight was from Biggin Hill to Luton and the flying time was to be 30 minutes, although the actual flying time turned out to be 40 minutes - probably the same amount of time it would take by car!! But due to the busy London airspace it's not as simple as going from A to B and runway 08 being in use at Luton probably also had an effect.

Our flights departure time was scheduled at 3pm, so when we got to Biggin Hill for 12pm we were somewhat early! After arriving at the main gate, we were greeted by a security officer with that "no spotters here" look on his face, so it was a picture when Daniel produced the booking confirmation! We went into the terminal and were directed to the Ambassador Lounge and it was at this point we realised the level of luxury we were about to experience. The red wine started to flow and we logged and photographed what we could see in the immediate vicinity, but most of the resident aircraft were in the distance and the weather, which was gradually getting worse, meant they went begging.

Daniel had received details of the flight the day before and we had contact details for our flight crew (captain Nick Cornthwaite and co-pilot Simon Kipling) and our aircraft was scheduled to be G-FBKC with the fixed call sign "Blinkair 7 Golf". On arrival there was an arrivals and departures board with all executive flights using the terminal and we noticed that our aircraft had changed to G-FBKD "Blinkair 8 Hotel" - a good thing as this aircraft carries the Lotus colour scheme and has the most luxurious interior of the Blink fleet - bonus! Our crew met us about an hour before the flight and we had a good chat and they said how good it was to have passengers with our level of interest and enthusiasm as opposed to the typical executive types. They then went off to prep and fuel the aircraft and at around 2.55pm we swam to the aircraft under the escort of the VERY nice blonde Biggin Hill handling agent.

We got some photos of the aircraft on the ground before a group photo in front of her, we then boarded the aircraft and took our seats where we were shocked at how the smaller-than-a-car interior could provide such high levels of comfort and luxury! To give you an idea of size, if I could have stretched my arm out of the window, I would have been able to touch the far side of the engine cowling!! Unfortunately runway 21 was in use, which meant we didn't taxi past the resident tins and biz we'd missed from the terminal and we were in cloud before we had chance to photograph these ramps from the air on departure.

We were expecting a very bumpy and rocky flight, but the nippy Mustang absorbed it all up and the flight could not possibly have been any smoother! During the flight we could see everything the pilots were doing and it wasn't long until we were obliterating the "Boardroom in the Sky services" which included Tea, Coffee, Water, Orange Juice, Beer, Red & White Wine, Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Nuts, Crisps and Biscuits - I don't know how much we left behind but it can't have been much! We were cruising at a mere 6000ft and before descent we each took turns to get photos in front of the cockpit and have a chat with our pilots. We'd heard the Mustang comes into it's own on landing and upon touch down at Luton the aircraft stopped on a dime! We panic-photographed all the biz-ramps from the runway as we didn't expect to get to all of them. We were expecting to park on the Pond, so it was a little bonus when we taxied a little further to the North West Corner.

We were met at Luton by yet another very nice blonde from Signature Flight Support, but before leaving the aircraft we each took turns to be photographed in the cockpit, from both inside and outside the aircraft. We were then driven to the Signature terminal where we waited for an escort to take us on a tour of the Signature ramps and hangars which had been pre-arranged by Daniel from the train in the morning when he rang Blink to ensure the flight was still going ahead, as private flights often get cancelled or adjusted (a similar tour of Biggin Hill was refused by the head of security, who sounded like the type we're all too familiar with unfortunately).

By now it was starting to get dark and we were starting to think about train times (Jamie was supposed to be going back to Liverpool, but we were running late so he had no choice but to go to Newcastle with the others before Daniel worked out a complicated journey home for him), the third and final fit blonde, this time a slightly older Czech example, drove us to Luton Parkway station where we began to make our way home. On the train down to London Danny had received some good news regarding his potential career progression on the trains, on the way back, it was my turn to receive some good news thanks to a phone call from Colin Granton - (I won't elaborate here though in case it gets read by anyone I know outside of the aviation community) so this put the cherry on the cake and a superb day was had by all, in fact, we all agreed that this was the single best aviation-related experience, if not wider-experience, we'd ever had! I would encourage every enthusiast out there to keep there eye on empty leg flights because you'll be hard pushed to have a better day of spotting!

A special thank you to our pilots, Captains Nick Cornthwaite and Simon Kipling as well as all the ground crew at Biggin Hill Handling and Signature Flight Support and a personal thank you to Daniel Boyd and Danny Banks for inviting me. Despite them not being likely to read this, I'd also like to thank my boss who put herself out to cover my shift at work so I could attend the trip as well as my two colleagues who actually covered the shift between them.

Noted inbound Heathrow was the following:

TC-JNK	Airbus A330-343X	Turkish Airlines

Also, the following inbound London City:

HB-IXN	Avro RJ-100	Swiss European Airlines

London Biggin Hill Airport - (BQH / EGKB)

CS-DTH	Bombardier Learjet 60	Heliavia Transporte Aereo
D-EMDT	Cessna P210N Pressurized Centurion	Corporate	Mis-pole
D-ILAT	Cessna 525 CitationJet CJ1	Liebherr-Aerospace Lindenberg
EI-LCM	Socata TBM-850	Folens Management Services Ltd
G-FBKD	Cessna 510 Citation Mustang	Blink Ltd	Our flight - Lotus c/s
G-SONE	Cessna 525A CitationJet CJ2	CJ 525 Ltd	Operated by Centreline Air Charter
G-ULES	Aerospatiale AS355F2 Twin Squirrel	Select Plant Hire Company Ltd
I-FDED	Raytheon Hawker 400XP	SLAM Lavori Aerei srl
N400UK	Lancair LC-41-550FG Columbia 400	Lucy in the Sky Corp
N403QS	Gulfstream G-IV	Renegade Swish LLC	Operated by NetJets International
N790SR	Cirrus SR22	Blue South Aviation Inc
OY-KVP	Bombardier Learjet 40	Partnerselskabez
PH-DTP	Raytheon 400A Beechjet	JetNetherlands BV