Battle for Britain Heats Up With Jet Aviation Biggin Hill

Jet Aviation veteran Elie Zelouf heads JA Biggin Hill.

Perhaps Jet Aviation's most significant move this year has been its entry into the UK with the opening of a facility at the famous Battle of Britain Biggin Hill airport, just south of London. The purchase of two hangars, covering 5,188 sq. m., will allow it to provide FBO services, maintenance and refurbishment to many types of business jets including Gulfstreams, Falcons, Hawkers and Cessna Citations.

The new British location is managed by Jet Aviation veteran Elie Zelouf, who is well known as the former general manager of Jet Aviation Basel.

"We are fortunate that Elie Zelouf accepted this new challenge and I feel confident that our London location will be well received by customers with him in charge," said Jet Aviation chairman and CEO Thomas Hirschmann.

Zelouf joined Jet Aviation in 1967 and was a key figure in establishing Jet Aviation Basel as a world-renowned maintenance organization and completion center. In 1999 he handed over the day-to-day operational responsibility of Jet Aviation Basel to his successor, Rainer Albecker.
The Biggin Hill facility began offering maintenance and refurbishment services on March 1, and will start to offer FBO services in the third quarter of this year. Heinz Köhli, president and COO of Jet Aviation Europe, Middle & Far East, noted "This step to purchase a location so close to the city of London was an important strategic move for Jet Aviation."

The company had hoped to build a new facility at Biggin Hill but the bizarre attitude of Bromley Council, which sold the airfield because it could not make money at it and now seems intent on preventing anyone else from doing so, scuttled those plans.

Nevertheless, Jet Aviation believes the facilities are more than adequate to compete with other service providers at London Luton, Stansted and Farnborough airports.

It has long had its eye on the UK, which it regarded as the one obvious gap in its growing European business aircraft network.