History
Squadron Leader Jock Maitland purchased a lease to run Biggin Hill Airport from Bromley Council in 1958, and commenced the first show in 1963. Jock Maitland had flown Sabres in conflict in Korea before retiring from RAF service. He started a small charter company, Maitland Air Charter which operated pleasure flights from Ramsgate Airport during 1959 and 1960, eventually using former RAF Percival Prentice aircraft refurbished and civilianised by Aviation Traders of Southend, a company started by Freddie Laker. Subsequently Jock set up in business with a local builder to form Maitland Drewery Aviation and operated Vickers Viscount aircraft. Drewery conceived the infamous steel Wendy House which once graced the Apron on Biggin Hill Airport. The council privatised the airport in 1988 and it was bought by Biggin Hill Airport Ltd in 1994, who agreed a 25 year contract for the air fair.
In 2010 Biggin Hill Airport Ltd, the airfield leaseholders cancelled the licence to run the air fair after 47 years, despite the licence having three years remaining.
Read more about this topic: Airfair Radio
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact; and anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the “anticipation of Nature.””
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
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—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)