Britain’s Penzance Heliport, which has hosted scheduled flights to the Isles of Scilly since 1964, is seeking to vary the noise levels in the planning restrictions it operates.

After the original heliport was sold off in 2012 for redevelopment as a supermarket, a new site a few hundred metres north east was approved by Cornwall Council in August 2018.  The Heliport is controlled by Robert Dorrien-Smith and family, and his company Tresco Island Ltd is the 100% owner of Penzance Heliport Ltd.  There is then a contract with a commercial operator to provide the helicopter service, and the operator does business as “Penzance Helicopters”

Initial flights from the new heliport were provided by Sloane Helicopters from March 2020 just as the COVID pandemic started, and continuing with AW139s to November 2022.  After that, the contract passed to Starspeed with Sikorsky S76s.  Their two planned aircraft were delayed in shipping and a variety of other substitute aircraft were used until the first Sikorsky started operations in July 2023.

As this article goes to press, one S76 has not flown since 8th April 2025 when it was ferried to its maintenance base 300 miles away at Biggin Hill.  The second aircraft was also offline from mid June to the end of July, the height of the holiday season when it was most needed.  In May 2025, Penzance Helicopters announced on Facebook that they will be adding a third S76 in the early Autumn to meet increasing passenger demand.

The planning proposal from heliport owners Tresco Island Ltd seeks to vary the approved noise restrictions was filed with Cornwall Council on 24th July.  Permission for the new heliport site was previously granted on the basis of the noise signature of the AW139 (the planned helicopter type at the time), with a 3db range permitted when an AW139 was not available, with reference to noise level data from the EASA Type Certificate Data Sheet for Noise.  The Sikorsky S76C+ has a slightly higher noise signature than the AW139, and falls just within the 3db range.

The new proposal requests this to be raised to 5db above AW139 levels, suggesting that other helicopter types must be under consideration, and perhaps implying that the S76 is no longer in the long-term plans.  The reason given – “due to the difficulty in sourcing aircraft within this decibel range” – does not wash as two AW139s have arrived in the UK on lease in the last ten days for a new contract.  The planning application does not mention which helicopter type(s) they expect to use.

Other noise-related variations requested include engine runs be allowed 07:30-19:15 Monday to Saturday (instead of 08:00-18:45) and 10:00-14:00 Sunday (instead of 13:00-16:00).

And finally, and perhaps most tellingly, they are seeking removal of the requirement for the heliport operator to employ “a suitably competent and qualified person” to measure, assess and report noise levels to the Planning Authority, with records to be retained for three years.   That is a very surprising move when there is a clear need to maintain good relations with the locals.