For those of you who have been following the BIH plans to move their operations to St Erth - here is the latest news !

    "British International Helicopters have abandoned plans to relocate their heliport to St Erth.

This follows strong opposition from local residents and the decision by both St Erth and St Ives Parish Councils to object to the planning application, which was due to go before Cornwall Planners later this month.
Last month, Sainsbury’s secured planning consent to build a new supermarket on the current heliport site in Penzance, which BIH have said they must sell to inject cash into their business.
The company will move from Penzance in June 2012 and say they have agreement to fly from Newquay airport after that time while reviewing other potential sites.
BIH Managing Director, Tony Jones, said “Our investigations tell us St Erth is the most suitable available site in Cornwall for a new Heliport, however we are prepared to review again any other potentially suitable sites in West Cornwall.”
In a separate statement, Al Titterington, Managing Director of Newquay Cornwall airport said they were “in discussions with British International Helicopters Ltd over the potential relocation of its Isles of Scilly passenger operations to Newquay from Penzance.”

    Below is a comment made on Scilly Today by a St Erth resident J Abram - I think he speaks a lot of sense !
     "More utter nonsense from Tony Jones…… His withdrawal from St Erth has nothing to do with local opposition. It’s entirely to do with the fact that the Highways Authority told him that Station Road was already over capacity, and that the junction with the A30 has a bad accident record, an that he’d failed to provide any realistic mitigation for that fact. Not to mention the narrow bridge and twisting road that prevented more than one large vehicle from passing, and obstructed the view of traffic from both directions.
Then this week Network Rail got more than a little annoyed at him for not speaking with them in the first instance, and producing a plan which significantly compromised the safety of the Railway. Landing within 10 to 20 metres of the side of trains. Not to mention making so much noise that people wouldn’t hear trains approaching on the manual level crossings and over flying the railway at low altitude.Then of course there’s the objection of the Environment Agency, who say that the site is a flood plane and that there is no mitigation for the additional flooding of the surrounding roads that his project would have caused. SO No Mr Jones!!!! It never was “the most suitable available site in Cornwall” and you didn’t walk away because of objections from local people, who you made it quite clear you couldn’t care less about. You walked away because the Statutory Consultees made it quite clear that the site was un-suitable for a Heliport and you stood no chance of being granted the permission. I can only say The Village of St Erth and the surrounding villages are pleased to see that you’ve had the sense to cut your losses and run. Which wouldn’t have been necessary had you bothered to investigate the site properly before you filed that ridiculous plan.As far as you were concerned the opinion of the people of St Erth was of no interest to you at all. Which you made quite clear during the public meeting. During which you didn’t, as you have claimed, answer peoples fears…. In fact you spent most of the meeting shrugging your shoulders, making “I don’t care” faces at people, looking at the floor and refusing to answer the questions put to you.The people of St Erth absolutely support the right of the People of the Scilly Isles to have their helicopter link. If that is what they want and need. They just didn’t see why they should have to pay for it. By having their property equity effectively transferred to your Company’s bank balance and their lives destroyed by your continuous noise and chemical pollution."