Cabin Disinfection at Girona-Costa Brava (LEGE)

Why schedule cabin disinfection at Girona-Costa Brava between charter legs?

Charter operators cycling through Mediterranean resort markets treat cabin disinfection as operational hygiene rather than deep cleaning. When an aircraft turns at LEGE after inbound passengers and departs two hours later with a new manifest, surface contamination from the previous flight—armrest oils, galley splashes, lavatory-door residue—carries forward unless you break the cycle. We disinfect the cabin between legs so the next passengers board a chemically clean interior.

The one-to-two-hour service window fits inside typical FBO turnarounds: refuelling, catering load, crew rest and flight planning often run ninety minutes to two hours anyway, and disinfection proceeds in parallel once catering is stowed and the cabin is clear. If you land at 19:00 and file for a 21:30 slot, we finish disinfection, odour neutralisation and air-path treatment before the handler calls for taxi, and you leave with a certificate of treatment in the tech log.

Recurring work—three visits a week through summer, twice-weekly positioning during ski season—is scheduled as a standing instruction with your handler. One-off requests (a medical repatriation, a smoke-contaminated cabin after a long positioning leg, a galley spill that soured overnight) are coordinated by phone or email as soon as you have an arrival time and a departure slot.

What changes at Girona-Costa Brava that affects turnaround disinfection?

Girona-Costa Brava sits at 469 feet elevation, 12.5 kilometres south-west of Girona city centre, with a single 2,400-metre runway (01/19) serving scheduled traffic, charter flights and business aviation. The airport operates around the clock with no published curfew; customs, immigration, air-traffic services, fuelling, handling and de-icing are available during aerodrome hours, which AIP and Aena both list as H24. Six general aviation handling agents are licensed at the field, and three explicitly offer 24-hour service: Universal Aviation operates continuously, ExecuJet provides H24 on request, and Sky Valet maintains H24 customs and operations. That coverage means disinfection can be scheduled into late-evening or early-morning turnarounds without waiting for a handler to open or negotiating after-hours fees.

The handling agents work from different facilities: Centervol operates its own 2,000-square-metre FBO with lounges, crew briefing rooms and a Part-145 hangar inside the perimeter; ExecuJet lists a General Aviation Terminal at Vilobí d'Onyar; Sky Valet and Universal Aviation run VIP and crew lounges inside the main terminal building. We coordinate airside access through whichever handler you've selected, collect the airside escort at the handler's operations desk and drive to the stand. If your aircraft is parked on Centervol's apron, we meet the handler at the FBO; if you're on a main-apron stand served by Sky Valet or Universal, we clear security at the terminal and walk or drive airside with the escort.

Girona-Costa Brava is categorised as a resort airport, so summer months bring dense charter and positioning traffic; winter is quieter but ski-season positioning to Andorra and the Pyrenees keeps the apron busy on weekends. Turnaround slots tighten in July and August—if you need disinfection between legs during peak season, book the service when you file the PPR so the handler reserves apron time and we schedule technicians accordingly.

How does cabin disinfection work on the ramp at LEGE?

Once the handler marshals your aircraft to the stand and chocks are in, we wait for catering and any galley or lavatory service to finish, then board with disinfectant sprayers, microfibre applicators and odour-neutralising foggers. The sequence is systematic: we spray and wipe every seat—leather, Alcantara, fabric—plus armrests, seat-back tables, latches, window shades, seatbelt buckles and side-panel switches. Galley counters, drawer handles, oven latches and the coffee-maker fascia are treated next, followed by lavatory taps, flush buttons, door handles and mirror surrounds. Air vents and gaspers receive disinfectant mist; the air path—return grilles, any accessible ducting—is fogged to neutralise airborne odour molecules and microbial reservoirs.

If the previous flight left galley or lavatory odours, or if someone smoked in the cabin (rare but not unknown on long positioning legs), we deploy a hydroxyl generator or ozone neutraliser for fifteen to thirty minutes after surface disinfection. The cabin is ventilated through the air-conditioning packs or by opening the door, and we run a smell check before signing off. You receive a certificate of treatment listing the disinfectants used, the surfaces treated, the technician's name and the date; the certificate goes into your records for audit or insurance, and we email a digital copy to the flight department and the handler.

Which disinfectants do you use, and are they safe for OEM cabin materials?

We use quaternary-ammonium and hydrogen-peroxide formulations approved for aircraft interiors by material-compatibility testing: no phenolics that yellow Alcantara, no bleach that fades leather dye, no alcohol concentrations that crack acrylic lens covers. Each product is chosen to match the surface—leather seats receive a pH-neutral quat spray, galley stainless steel and lavatory fixtures take peroxide cleaner-disinfectant, and soft goods (curtains, cushions, carpets) are misted with encapsulating foam that traps soil and odour molecules without saturating the fabric.

Before we treat a new aircraft type or a custom cabin, we ask the flight department or the completions centre for the OEM material schedule and any manufacturer cleaning bulletins. If the schedule lists a proprietary finish (a ceramic-coated wood veneer, a nano-coated stone inlay, a resin-impregnated fabric), we test the disinfectant on an inconspicuous patch—under a seat cushion, inside a cabinet door—and wait twenty-four hours for any discolouration or texture change. Once the test passes, we add the material and the approved product to our aircraft file so future disinfections proceed without delay.

Avionics, cockpit glass and any no-touch placards are respected: we do not spray multifunction displays, primary flight displays or the glareshield, and we keep moisture away from static ports and pitot inlets even though we work only in the cabin. If a crew member asks us to disinfect the cockpit—throttle quadrant, yoke grips, radio knobs—we do so with a lightly dampened cloth and immediately dry every surface to prevent liquid ingress into switches or circuit breakers.

Can disinfection be added to a wash or detail visit at Girona-Costa Brava?

Yes. Many operators combine cabin disinfection with a dry wash or a rinseless exterior wash when the aircraft will be on the ground for three to four hours—enough time to clean the fuselage, polish the nacelles and leading edges, then move inside for disinfection and a galley or lavatory wipe-down. The combined service is efficient: we bring one team and one set of equipment to the stand, the handler writes one work order, and you pay one call-out instead of two.

If you are scheduling a full detail—exterior wash, polish, cabin deep clean—we perform disinfection as the final step, after vacuuming, leather conditioning and carpet extraction. That sequence ensures disinfectant is the last chemistry applied to high-touch surfaces, maximising the microbial kill and leaving the cabin in audit-ready condition. The certificate of treatment lists both the detail work and the disinfection, so your records show a complete service history for that date.

Recurring customers at LEGE—fleet operators, charter companies with a summer base on the Costa Brava—often adopt a rhythm: exterior wash every other visit, cabin disinfection every visit, full detail once a month. We store the schedule in our dispatch system, the handler adds it to your standing handling instruction, and the work proceeds automatically each time you file a PPR. If a flight cancels or repositions to a different airport, a quick email to the handler and to our operations desk removes that date from the calendar.

What documentation and photos do you provide after disinfection at LEGE?

Every disinfection visit concludes with a certificate of treatment: a single-page document listing the aircraft registration, the date and time, the surfaces treated (seats, galley, lavatory, air vents), the disinfectant product names and active ingredients, the technician's name and signature, and any additional work performed (odour neutralisation, smoke remediation). The certificate is printed on site, handed to the captain or the handler, and emailed as a PDF to the flight department within two hours. If your company requires a specific format—a particular header, a purchase-order number, a quality-management-system reference—we incorporate that into the template after the first visit.

Photographs are included when requested, typically for insurance claims, audit trails or fleet-management reports. We shoot before-and-after images of high-touch areas (armrests, galley counters, lavatory taps), time-stamped and geotagged, and deliver them via WeTransfer or a shared drive link. If you want a photo report after every disinfection—useful for charter operators who must demonstrate cleanliness to brokers and passengers—we build that into the service specification and deliver the album within four hours of wheels-up.