Deputy Lieutenant killed in air crash (From This is Hampshire)

Deputy Lieutenant killed in air crash

2:45pm Friday 10th July 2009 in

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ONE of Hampshire’s Deputy Lieutenants has been killed in a light aircraft crash.

Captain John Fairey was at the controls of a plane which went down in Lincolnshire on Wednesday.

He was Deputy Lieutenant of Hampshire and a former commercial airline pilot.

Born in 1935 and educated at Eton and Magdalene College, Cambridge, John Fairey was the son of Sir Richard Fairey, who founded the Fairey Aviation company which was based in Hayes, Middlesex.

In the 1960s, he Fairey joined Cambrian Airways as a pilot and continued flying when the company was taken over by BOAC (later British Airways) until he left to go to Rhodesia in 1978, where he flew with the Rhodesian Air Force.

He returned to England in 1980 and flew for the Channel Express company until he reached retirement age of 65.

Capt Fairey was a well-known and popular figure in UK aviation, often flying at air shows, and living in the village of Broughton in Hampshire.