Chambery to London Biggin Hill is roughly 1 h 23 airborne across 765 km. The Savoie field has a single paved strip of 2,020 m beside Lac du Bourget, so in midwinter the aeroplane is something we work out for your morning rather than something we assume; Grenoble and Geneva go into the plan as alternates beforehand. Biggin Hill leaves you on the south-eastern rim of London instead of the far side of it.
Home from the Savoie, landing where Kent, Surrey and the City are a short drive rather than a crossing of the capital. Under ninety minutes in the air. Send us the day, the numbers and an honest account of the bags – on Alpine work the baggage tends to pick the aeroplane before the seating does.
REQUEST A QUOTEThe two ends of this sector have almost nothing in common. In London it is a matter of your postcode and no more: sitting south-east of the city, Biggin Hill spares anyone from Kent, Surrey or the City the crossing that Luton and Farnborough impose. In Savoie it is a matter of the mountain – one runway in a valley, weather that behaves accordingly, and a four-month winter in which a single weekday does most of the damage. Flying is the straightforward part of this trip. Choosing the morning, and knowing whether the field will work that morning, is not.
The paved strip at Chambery measures 2,020 m. Across 765 km that has nothing to do with range – every type we would offer carries several times what the sector needs. It is a performance question, and in the Alps performance has a season attached to it: a runway contaminated on a January morning is not the runway that was there in June.
Departures are where the sums have least room in them, because an aeroplane is heaviest as it rolls. Sector fuel, a full complement of passengers and a hold stuffed with equipment all arrive in the same calculation, and the calculation is run against the conditions of your actual morning rather than a typical one. That is why the type is fixed for your date instead of assumed, and why the truthful answer on some winter mornings is Grenoble or Geneva with more road at the front of the day. We would rather put that to you at the booking than at the airport with the bags already aboard.
Alongside the pavement there is a 700 m grass strip. It belongs to light aviation and has no bearing on a jet charter whatever. Airport listings show it and readers ask about it, so we name it here and then set it aside.
One field in the valley, two more held in reserve behind it, and at the English end a choice decided wholly by where you are going once you land. All three Alpine options sit within fifty kilometres of one another – a few minutes of cruise – so nothing that separates them happens in the air.
| Field | Codes | Great-circle to Biggin Hill | What to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chambery Savoie | CMF / LFLB | 765 km | Your departure, and the jet-capable field closest to the Trois Vallees – the reason it gets used leaving as much as arriving. It is a valley airport 234 m above the sea, with a single 2,020 m paved runway, terrain on its doorstep and weather that warrants more caution than open ground would. The worst mornings of its year are winter Saturdays. |
| Grenoble Alpes-Isere | GNB / LFLS | 770 km | Our filed alternate, written in as routine rather than reserved for gloomy forecasts. Out on the plain it keeps working when the valley fields stop. Five kilometres more to London than Chambery, so the air time is unchanged; the cost is a longer descent by road from the resort. |
| Geneva | GVA / LSGG | 720 km | The second alternate and the shortest of the three sectors. A full business-aviation airport carrying none of the valley’s restrictions, and the sensible answer when a large group has to stay in one cabin, or when certainty is worth more than the final hour of road. |
| London Biggin Hill | BQH / EGKB | arrival | Where the sector ends, at the south-eastern edge of London. There is exactly one argument for it and it is the drive. Should the aeroplane that fits your party be standing at Luton or Farnborough instead, we will tell you and let you weigh road against type – on a ski weekend the aeroplane usually carries that argument. |
Distances are great-circle figures between airport coordinates from the OurAirports open dataset. Chambery’s size ceiling and its seasonal congestion are stated qualitatively: we have not sourced published figures for either and will not invent them.
Light and midsize covers this sector as a matter of course. What fills up is the hold rather than the seating – boards, boots and skis occupy room that the people themselves do not – and the equipment is exactly as bulky going home as it was coming out.
A light jet whose baggage compartment takes ski bags without argument, and our usual opening suggestion for a party of four to six. Also the easiest of the three to secure late, which in February outweighs any specification.
See the Embraer Phenom 300 ›A midsize cabin you can stand up in, with a short-field record that fits this airport. It also carries the largest hold of the three, which on an Alpine departure is generally the deciding factor.
See the Cessna Citation XLS+ ›Midsize again, for a bigger group, with a proper galley and its own lavatory. Its runway performance gets checked against your date, exactly like everything else on this page.
See the Hawker 800XP ›Cabin dimensions and range by type are on the aircraft pages; allowances are on the luggage page.
There is no price for this pairing on this page, and we are not going to reverse one out of an hourly rate and dress it up as a figure. In the Alps the biggest number in the calculation is not the kilometres – it is the date.
Take a Saturday changeover in February and a Tuesday in May: the same 765 km, but two unrelated markets, because on the February Saturday every suitable aeroplane in northern Europe already belongs to someone. Leaving, a second effect pushes back the other way. The parties who arrived on the Saturday are the parties departing on the Saturday, so aeroplanes that flew in loaded frequently have nothing at all to fly out with. Brokers publish discounts of 50 to 75 percent on flights in that position. Work out which of your days could move before you ask what a fixed day would cost.
Send the dates, the number of passengers and a description of the luggage, and you will get genuine options with genuine numbers, generally within half an hour. The desk is manned round the clock on +357 95 119759.
Nothing about the Alpine calendar is gradual. Between December and March this is one of Europe’s busiest short corridors; by late spring it has become a sector nobody has to plan around at all.
| Period | What happens | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Saturdays, December to March | Changeover day. The whole Tarentaise attempts to leave inside one short window, and what runs out is handling staff and parking stands rather than aeroplanes. | Four to six weeks if the day is immovable. If it is not, move it – Sunday or Wednesday is the same trip with far less waiting. |
| Christmas, New Year and the February school holidays | A peak inside the peak. Valley capacity is committed months out and there is no give anywhere in the system. | Six to eight weeks. Settle which field you are leaving from before you settle the cabin, not the other way round. |
| The rest of the winter season | Heavy but workable. The forecast counts for more than the date, and a pre-filed alternate keeps that from becoming a problem. | One to two weeks. Name the hour you need to be back in London and we will build the morning backwards from it. |
| April to November | Two-thirds of the year, and quiet. Lac du Bourget and the summer mountains raise a modest bump from June to September; the rest is close to empty. | A week is ample and last-minute is easy. It is also the stretch in which the runway stops being a seasonal question at all. |
What happens on the ground at Chambery is reported from our own operating experience; no published movement data underlies it.
Biggin Hill is a base as much as a destination. If the Alps were the middle of a trip rather than its conclusion, these are the sectors worth knowing about.
Back to the mountains through the dependable door – the field without the valley’s restrictions, and the one to use when the group is large.
Biggin Hill to Geneva ›The Italian flank of the same range, published here as a route in its own right.
Biggin Hill to Turin ›Down to the coast once the snow has finished. Identical short drive out of south-east London, a completely different arrival.
Biggin Hill to Nice ›Tell us your dates and how many of you there are. Your dedicated flight advisor will come back with aircraft options and a firm price.
All published routes are listed on the route index. Also useful: the fleet, current empty legs, jet sharing.