Very sad news indeed, a great and lovely man.... I joined Fllight from Warton flight test in '74 and Mike was the inspiration for my writing career covering most of the succeeding 40+ years. He was a brilliant writer, a wonderful leader and tutor, and he assembled a superb editorial team, myself excluded!!
One of his mantras was that de Havilland must NEVER start a sentence (as that would mean 'de' with a capital D).
There is a fine obituary on the Fiight web site, but this system doesn't allow me to post it, BAH!!