Cabin Disinfection at Albenga Riviera Airport (LIMG)

What changes at Albenga Riviera Airport?

Albenga Riviera Airport sits 149 feet above the Ligurian coast, seven kilometres from Albenga town, with a single 1,432-metre asphalt runway usable by aircraft up to roughly 60 tonnes MTOW—large-cabin business jets fit comfortably. Operating hours shift with the season: March to October the field runs 08:00 to 20:00 local (06:00–18:00 UTC), giving you long daylight windows for turnarounds; October through March it shortens to 08:30–18:30 local (07:30–17:30 UTC). Administration, customs, ATS, fuelling and handling all follow those hours, so winter slots close earlier and any extension needs twelve hours' prior permission through the handler.

Riviera Airport S.p.A. provides in-house handling from the main terminal on Viale Generale Disegna in Villanova d'Albenga; you request service via their EU or extra-EU handling forms. Italian Customs and immigration are on site but only during published hours, so non-Schengen arrivals or out-of-hours movements require the same twelve-hour PPR. For cabin disinfection the seasonal timetable matters: summer's extra daylight means we can finish a two-hour treatment and still leave you a comfortable margin before the 18:00 UTC close; in winter every hour counts, and we prefer morning slots to avoid rushing the final walk-through.

How does cabin disinfection fit a turnaround at Albenga?

Most turnarounds here are charter hops along the Italian coast or positioning legs to the French Riviera, so you rarely have more than ninety minutes on the stand. Cabin disinfection takes one to two hours depending on aircraft size and cabin configuration—a super-midsize with eight seats and a single lavatory sits at the short end; an ultra-long-range layout with berthing divans, a full galley and two lavatories pushes toward two hours. If you land mid-morning in summer you have the margin; if you arrive late afternoon in winter and need to depart before the 17:30 UTC cut-off, the arithmetic tightens and we recommend booking the night before so we meet you on the apron.

We work around refuelling and any light maintenance; the handler will position a GPU if you ask, which lets us keep cabin power without running the APU and gives the avionics bay time to cool. Because Riviera Airport operates in-house handling there is only one ramp team to brief, and they already know where we park our kit. You sign the tech log for the treatment, we photograph the cabin before and after, and the certificate goes into your records folder before you file the next flight plan.

What does the handler expect when we bring a third-party detailer?

Riviera Airport S.p.A. asks for the usual: our company details on your handling request form, a copy of our airside-escort letter and insurance certificate, and confirmation that we carry our own consumables so nothing is drawn from their stores. Because the airport is not slot-coordinated you will not wait for a stand, but the handler does like to know total ground time—if you block two hours for disinfection, state it on the form so they do not rush you off the ramp for the next arrival.

We bring our own trolley steps or use the aircraft airstairs; we do not need a belt loader or tug, and we keep all waste in sealed bags that leave with us. The handler will ask whether you want the aircraft repositioned after treatment or left on the same stand; if another movement is due we coordinate the timing so you are not charged twice for marshalling. One detail specific to Albenga: because customs and immigration work only published hours, if your inbound is non-Schengen the handler will hold the aircraft until clearance is complete, and we start disinfection only after the officials leave the cabin.

Recurring work versus one-off disinfection at this base

If you operate a regular charter programme through Albenga—weekend shuttles for the Riviera season, for example—we can write a standing order with the handler so that every inbound leg triggers a disinfection without a fresh request each time. You nominate the aircraft registration, the expected frequency and any blackout dates, and we invoice monthly. The standing order works well in summer when the airport hours are long and your schedule is predictable; in winter, when daylight and slot availability compress, many operators prefer to call disinfection only after a medical charter or a long-haul leg with heavy galley use.

One-off requests go through the handler's operations desk or directly to us by telephone or email; we ask for twelve hours' notice to match the airport's own PPR threshold, though in practice we can often meet an aircraft with six hours if we are already on site for another customer. Albenga is not a hub—traffic is light even in summer—so we do not keep a permanent team on the field, but we stage from Genoa and the drive is under an hour.

Which surfaces and systems do we treat during cabin disinfection?

Every seat gets attention: leather or fabric upholstery, armrest caps, recline levers, seat-back pockets and magazine nets, tray tables and their latches, window shades and bezels, side-ledge stowage bins and the overhead-locker handles within the cabin zone. We wipe down all galley surfaces—countertop, drawer pulls, the coffee-maker face, the refrigerator handle and door seals—and every lavatory fixture: taps, flush buttons, door locks, the vanity surround, toilet seat and lid. Cockpit disinfection is available as an add-on if the crew requests it, but the standard service stops at the cockpit door.

Air vents and gaspers are wiped with a lint-free cloth dampened with the same aviation-approved quaternary-ammonium disinfectant we use everywhere else; we do not remove the grilles or treat the ducting—that is part of a deep cabin decontamination, not this service. Odour and smoke neutralisation uses an enzymatic spray that breaks down organic molecules rather than masking them; we fog the cabin lightly, let it dwell for ten minutes, then ventilate with the cabin air running. The treatment leaves no residue on avionics panels or touchscreen controls, and the scent dissipates completely before you board passengers.

What documentation and photo report do we provide?

You receive a certificate of treatment on Terso letterhead listing the aircraft registration, date, location, products used—including their Easa or equivalent approval references—contact time and the technician's signature. The certificate is written in English and Italian, and we email a PDF copy to the address you nominate, usually the chief pilot or flight-department manager, within two hours of finishing the work. If you need the document for a specific passenger—common on medical charters—we can add patient-transport or air-ambulance wording and send it directly to the broker.

The photo report is a separate file: before-and-after images of the cabin overview, close-ups of high-touch zones—galley countertop, lavatory taps, seat controls—and a shot of the product labels so your quality team can verify the disinfectant batch numbers. We take between ten and fifteen photographs, depending on cabin size, and the file goes into the same email as the certificate. If you are building an audit trail for IS-BAO or an equivalent standard, the timestamped images and the product traceability usually satisfy the inspector's request for objective evidence of sanitation between legs.