There are plans to create a Plymouth City Heliport, with regular services to Exeter and Newquay, which will link the UK city to those airports' services to Europe and most critically to the global connectivity of London Heathrow, according to report in local newspaper Plymouth Herald.
Halo Aviation, a charter helicopter firm based in Surrey, UK, intends to acquire land and a mansion, already with its own helipad, in the city, in order to launch the new services. It says it wants to launch a shuttle service to Exeter and link the city to Heathrow via Newquay, using flybe. (2002)'s 4x daily operation to the UK's busiest airport. Between them, Newquay and Exeter airports currently offer direct flights to destinations in Ireland, Spain, France, Malta, the Netherlands and Switzerland, as well as numerous domestic connections. The plan would also include providing an alternative landing and refuelling site for the local air ambulance, coastguard and police helicopters.
The helicopter operator, which operates a fleet of Agusta Grands, has applied to Plymouth City Council for an environmental impact assessment screening opinion, in order to understand if the idea is viable. Although council planning chiefs are yet to respond to the application, if it is passed, it would be a landmark decision coming eight years after the closure of Plymouth Roborough, the city's airport.
The last commercial flight from Plymouth City Airport, after about 90 years of services from the airfield, was Air Southwest (United Kingdom)'s operation to Glasgow International in July 2011. Now defunct, the UK regional airline then moved all of its flights to nearby Newquay.
In the application submitted to city planners, Halo Aviation says: "The primary proposed use of the heliport is for the transportation of individual clients to and from the site at their request. Should all those operations... become operational at the site then the applicant envisages an average of 3-4 commercial landings per week."
If approved, the city's new heliport would look to evolve into a site for electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft by 2030, according to documents submitted by Halo.
