Chamber’s North Lincs Area Council elects new Vice Chair and meets Humberside Airport firefighters

Paul Gouland (right) congratulates Kathy Fillingham on becoming Vice Chair of North Lincolnshire Area Council, watched by Crew Manager Steven Colakovic.

HUMBERSIDE Airport hosted the April meeting of the Hull & Humber Chamber of Commerce’s North East Lincolnshire Area Council in its Kirmington Suite.

The airport’s Commercial Director, Paul Litten, welcomed members to the airport with a brief presentation about the exciting plans and developments which are currently taking shape there.

Chair Paul Gouland, from the Clugston Group, thanked Mr Litten and Humberside Airport for hosting the meeting, during which Kathy Fillingham, the finance director of Scunthorpe-based CR Parrott Consultants Ltd, was unanimously elected as the North Lincolnshire Area Council’s Vice Chair. Kathy thanked the members for electing her and said she was looking forward to her new role.

After the meeting, Chamber members were taken on a tour of the airport and were treated to a demonstration of the airport’s new fire tenders. The airport has 32 fire officers and at least eight of them are on site at any one time. Fire and Rescue Solutions’ Crew Manager Steven Colakovic welcomed the visitors and introduced the two enormous Barracuda fire trucks which were recently purchased from Birmingham Airport.

Costing around £600,000 to buy new, each vehicle carries between six and eight hoses and up to 12,000 litres of water to deal with incidents. The top hose on the appliance can operate at a pressure of up to seven bar, which is powerful enough to knock a person off their feet.

Fire crews are on stand-by around the clock and have to be able to reach an incident anywhere on the airport within three minutes. They train continuously to deal with any eventuality. The airport’s own firefighters are backed up by fire crews from up to eight local authorities should a major incident occur.

Talking about the airport itself, Mr Litten said that 329,000 people go through Humberside Airport every year and it has now become one of the largest airport based heliports in the UK, along with another similar sized operation in Scotland.

Next year will see the Humberside become a Search and Rescue base, home to two brand new Sikorsky S92 helicopters operated by Bristows, but controlled by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. Construction of the new facilities is now underway.

Mr Litten said that as well as KLM, Eastern Airways, the helicopter flights and holiday flights with Thomas Cook, Thomson Holidays will be flying to Palma next year from Humberside.

“There are often calls for us to put on cheap flights to Malaga,” Mr Litten said, “but flights for less than £160 or so require large subsidies from airports. Nonetheless, we are working to bring more of these destinations back with additional operators”.

Mr Litten reminded guests that 18% of the airport is owned by North Lincolnshire Council, and leader, Coun Liz Redfern has a seat on the board and they have provided tremendous support.

The next two years will see six acres of land within the airport being developed, mainly to support the offshore wind activities, as well as other developments which will be announced in the coming months.

Chamber of Commerce members with firefighters at Humberside Airport.

Humberside Airport firefighters work on a "casualty" rescued from a burning building.