I was on the committee during some of the fuel supply negotiations. The original plan, if I remember correctly, was to try and get a non BP source of Avgas so there would be real price competition on the field, but for various reasons that was not possible. Plus it transpired that it would have meant building a fuel farm just for the club, which would have been mad. The airport was not in favour of the club sourcing its own fuel at all, preferring the monopoly which Samson held to be maintained. But they could not argue that successfully on monopoly grounds, and reluctantly agreed to let the club supply its own fuel for its own planes and for members.
I really don't know all the details, and others I did know I have forgotten. What I do know is that the price of fuel at the field dropped very substantially once Samson had some competition, and it was decent competition since the club planes burnt a substantial fraction all the avgas sold at the field. Around 175,000 litres p.a. for the club fleet, out of a total of about 500,000 litres p.a. on the field.
Of course Samson dropped its price when the club started its own fuel supply; they could not do anything else, so instantaneously it did not matter to someone in the Bellman whether they taxied around to the club bowser, or got Samson to fuel them at the Bellman. The difference was that the price they were paying was less. And the club was paying less, by around 10p a litre. Yes, the ex-Gill bowser cost a few thousand to fix up, but saving 10p a litre on 175,000 a year quickly paid for that.
As far as engineering is concerned post Littlewings, the engineer we got was excellent. Paul did his very best in a freezing hangar with clapped out equipment. People who had been taking their planes to Carlisle or Blackpool or Bagby for maintenance started using Newcastle again; but even then the landing fees issue raised its head. An airfield which owns the on site maintenance facility is not going to stifle engineering business by charging landing fees to customers. But of course Newcastle couldn't work like this, so a light twin driver would be £30 or so worse off if s/he was not based at Newcastle before the engineer even looked at the plane. And I think Paul did make a difference; he was courteous, the planes got fixed, and more were on line than before.
I have never met the more recent engineering staff, and have no experience of their work, so this is not intended as a comparison with recent times. It's just to set the record straight on that particular period. Eventually Paul left for family reasons, and a great shame too.