Exterior Dry Wash at Farnborough (EGLF)

How does a third-party detailing crew work through Farnborough's single-operator FBO?

Farnborough Airport Ltd operates the runway, the handling and the FBO as one entity, and planning permission requires that all ground handling is provided by the airport itself. There are no competing handlers on the apron. When you book an exterior dry wash, we notify the airport's operations team in advance, submit our personnel details for airside escort and confirm the stand assignment and turnaround window.

On the day, an airport escort meets our crew at the Domus III facility, walks us airside and remains present throughout the wash. We carry our own rinseless chemicals, microfibre cloths, brushes and ladders; the airport supplies GPU if you need avionics dark, and we plug our lighting into ground power or use battery packs after dark. The whole arrangement mirrors what you already do for catering or line maintenance: one phone call to the FBO, one invoice line, no separate contractor gates.

Because the airport manages every movement under a PPR system and tracks its annual cap of fifty thousand movements, they prefer as much notice as possible—ideally forty-eight hours for a dry wash, though we have turned around aircraft the same morning when a slot opens and the escort is free.

What timing works between legs at Farnborough?

A dry wash takes three hours for a super-midsize jet in light soiling, five to six hours for a Global or Falcon 7X with exhaust staining on the belly and nacelles, and up to eight hours for an ACJ or BBJ if you want the gear bays degreased and the cheat line brought back to gloss. Most chief pilots schedule us during a planned overnight stop or a longer same-day gap—say, inbound at ten in the morning, outbound at six in the evening.

If you operate a tight turnaround—two hours on the ground for fuel, catering and a crew change—the dry wash moves to the night before or the morning after. We have also split the job across two short visits: fuselage and wings during a quick turn, then belly and gear bays during the next longer stop. The single-FBO model actually makes split scheduling simpler, because operations already has both movements in the system and can assign the same stand or a neighbouring one.

For aircraft based at Farnborough and parked in one of the hangars, we work to your departure calendar. You tell us which day the jet next flies, and we arrive the afternoon before to wash inside the hangar or on the apron if the weather is dry and the stand is free.

What changes at Farnborough that a detailing crew needs to know?

Farnborough sits at two hundred and thirty-eight feet elevation in Hampshire, about an hour west of central London by road. The single runway—06/24, two thousand four hundred and forty metres—handles everything from light jets to ACJs and VIP wide-bodies during the biennial airshow, though day-to-day traffic is overwhelmingly super-midsize and above. Operating hours are Monday to Friday 07:00 to 22:00 local, Saturday, Sunday and Bank Holidays 08:00 to 20:00 local, and the airport is closed Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Planning Condition 8 prohibits movements outside these hours except in an emergency, so if your inbound flight arrives late and pushes the dry wash past curfew, we either start the next morning or move the work to a different day entirely.

Because the airport is dedicated to business aviation—no scheduled passenger services, no inclusive-tour charters, no training circuits—the apron is quieter and more predictable than a mixed-use field. Stands are assigned by the FBO with plenty of room between aircraft, which means we can set up ladders and work around the empennage without waiting for a neighbouring jet to push back. Hangar space is available on site, including a new hangar completed in 2024, so aircraft that stay overnight or longer often go inside, and we wash them there under LED high-bays with no weather delays.

Does recurring dry-wash work make sense for a jet based at Farnborough?

If your aircraft spends more than half its nights at Farnborough—either because the principal lives nearby or because the flight department uses it as a European hub—a standing dry-wash schedule saves time and keeps the exterior ahead of oxidation. We recommend a waterless wash every two to four weeks for jets in regular service, timed around your flying pattern so the aircraft is always clean for the next departure.

A typical recurring agreement looks like this: we visit every third Thursday afternoon, the FBO notifies us which stand or hangar bay the jet is in, and we complete the wash before the weekend. If the aircraft is away on a trip, we shift to the following week; if it comes back filthy from a de-icing event or a long North Atlantic leg through sooty air, you call us in early and we reset the interval. The airport's operations team gets used to seeing our crew, the escort process becomes routine, and the invoice rhythm matches your other monthly suppliers.

For fleets, we can stagger the schedule—one aircraft every week rather than three aircraft on the same day—so your chief pilot always has at least one jet in presentable condition. The single-handler model at Farnborough makes fleet coordination straightforward: one point of contact for ramp access, one airside-pass system, one set of insurance and security paperwork.

What does a dry wash remove, and what does it leave for a full decon?

An exterior dry wash tackles the film that accumulates between proper washes: bug strikes on the leading edges and radome, exhaust soot around the APU outlet and aft fuselage, hydraulic mist on the belly and gear doors, and general dust on the wings and tail. We spray aviation-approved rinseless cleaner onto the surface, agitate with microfibre cloths or soft brushes, and wipe to a clean finish. The process leaves no standing water, no runoff into apron drains, and no streaks on the windows.

Brightwork—leading edges, nacelle lips, wing-root fairings—gets a light wipe to remove oxidation and restore some gloss, but a dry wash will not bring back mirror finish on badly weathered aluminium; that needs a single-stage polish. Similarly, we degrease the belly and scrub the gear bays, but if the undercarriage has months of baked-on oil and carbon, the job moves into a full decontamination with the aircraft in a hangar and the gear swung.

The value of recurring dry washes is that they prevent the need for aggressive decon work. A jet washed every three weeks never develops the thick soot layer that requires solvent and an hour per nacelle. It stays in the light-maintenance category: quick, non-invasive, no downtime.

What happens when the aircraft is AOG or the schedule changes last-minute?

If your jet goes tech and the departure slips by six hours, we adjust the wash window or postpone to the next duty period. Because Farnborough requires PPR for every movement and the FBO tracks each turnaround, they usually know about schedule changes before we do—operations will ring us and say the inbound is delayed or the tech log has an open item. If the delay is short and we have another job later that day, we swap the order; if it is longer, we move your aircraft to the next available slot in our calendar and the airport's escort roster.

AOG situations sometimes create the opposite request: the part arrives, the engineer signs off the log, and the chief pilot wants the aircraft clean before the owner boards two hours later. We keep a ready kit in the van—rinseless chemicals, cloths, a short ladder—and if we are within thirty minutes of Farnborough and the FBO can arrange an immediate escort, we have turned around an express dry wash in under three hours. It will not be the eight-hour detail with full gear-bay degreasing, but it will remove the obvious dirt and make the jet presentable.

The single-operator model helps here: one phone call to the airport's duty desk sorts out both the schedule change and the airside access, rather than chasing a separate handler, a separate escort company and a separate invoice.