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Secretary - Stuart Powney
Stuart was born in Manchester, and lived close to Ringway, later Manchester Airport, until he joined the Royal Air Force in October 1964. His father paid ten shillings for his first ever flight – in a Dragon Rapide – at Ringway when he was eight. He served 12 years in the RAF as an airframe fitter, working with types such as Varsity, Meteor, Beverley, Argosy, and Jet Provost. An interesting start to his aviation career, which took in Aden and Bahrein as overseas postings, and with hindsight, provided the best possible start to his career an aircraft engineer.
Having left the RAF, Dan Air Engineering at Manchester Airport launched Stuart’s civil aviation career, where he gained his Engineer’s Licenses whilst working on HS 748 and BAC 1-11 aircraft in the main, later adding the DHC Dash 7 aircraft to the list. Working with Dan Air took Stuart to exotic locations such as Trinidad & Tobago, the Cayman Islands, and the Azores, a far cry from Khormaksar beach! An opportunity to work on the Plane Sailing Catalina presented itself whilst at Dan Air, when he led a team of Apprentices in the re-fitting of the ‘Cat’s waist gun blisters. Stuart has been a member of the volunteer crew ever since.
Stuart moved to Coventry Airport in July 1990, where he joined Atlantic Aero-engineering of Air Atlantique. Eventually, he took on the post of Quality Manager there in 1993, and his experiences with the Classic aircraft based at Coventry provided a unique opportunity, which led, through Pete Thorn, to Stuart joining the HAA.
In January 2002, Stuart was asked to head up the Quality Department for Atlantic Airlines. Little did he realise then that the change of company would involve him with such interesting aircraft as Antonov AN26, AN 72 and 74 freighters, much less Tupolev Tu204 cargo aircraft.
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