I’m relatively new to this forum so have only recently come across this topic which is of great personal interest to me.

Both my later father and I briefly worked for Airwork. However, whilst my association was fairly mundane – an admin job in the Supplies Division at Ferndown in 1983/84, my father was a pilot with the Fleet Requirements Unit (FRU) at Hurn in 1968/69. This primarily involved flying the Meteor T7 and Meteor TT20 on target towing and radar calibration sorties. Tragically he was killed in February 1969 when the Meteor T7 (WL350) he was receiving a competency check in to extend his QFI status developed a flat spin and crashed near Blandford in Dorset. His examiner that day, an RAF Flight Lieutenant, was also killed. No ejector seats in the T7 of course…..

More recently I’ve been looking into the history of Airwork and what a long and rich history it is – stretching back to the 1920s. In addition to having provided a variety of defence support services to the RAF, Fleet Air Arm and overseas air forces over the years, Airwork also played an important role in the early development of civil aviation – both in the UK and abroad. Airwork is something of ‘an unsung hero’ in the history of British aviation. As PaulR indicates there is little to be found on the internet, certainly nothing official, although if one searches long enough a basic history can be outlined. Also I’m sure there would have been a great deal of interesting documents held in the Airwork archive at some point but there must be a risk that much of this was destroyed following the sale of the company to Bombardier and more recently the VT Group. Hopefully this is not the case.

I intend to try and write up a summary of the company’s history at some point and post in on the internet. So if anyone has any knowledge of Airwork and its history I’d be pleased to hear from them. Are there any more ex employees out there?

One small question I have which hopefully someone may be willing to help is in respect of the company’s name. The FRU (and later FRADU) was operated by ‘Airwork Services Limited’ whilst I worked for plain ‘Airwork Limited’ – the original company registered in 1936. Were these the same company or was Airwork Services a subsidiary of the main Airwork?

Regards,

Mark

Mark,

A good buy which will give you the detailed history of Airwork in its formative years is
“Coming into Land” by Tim Sherwood, available from Hounslow Library at £11.99 plus postage. This basically covers the history of Heston Airport, where Airwork started commercially and also Hanworth Air Park, Hounslow Aerodrome (world’s first commercial air service) and the Gt. Western Airfield (Fairey’s airfield before it became Heathrow).
As well as being excellently presented and written, it has a wealth of good historical pictures.