Ports it sounds about right.
The scottish engineering Mafia stitched it all up when the polys started to call themselves Uni's. The Engineering student applications started going down in quality and numbers.
From memory they were also trying to get a minimum UCCA points, so even if you passed a MEng, if you had got in through clearing or needed next to nothing to get in you still couldn't get a CEng. It was when everyone was dropping entrance requirments. They were trying to tie it down to 10 Uni's in the UK for accreditation. It would have also had the advantage that those 10 would likely get the bulk of the research grants.
It was hugely political and was to stop the breeze block Uni's from stealing students from the red brick. It didn't help that RIGIT or as RGU as it is now was going from strength to strength and producing Engineers for the oil industry through the ONC, HND, BEng upgrade route. Aberdeen Uni's Mech Eng deptment was struggling with only the oversea's students keeping it afloat.
Personally I think the name of the course is purely dependent on if the Director of Studies can spell aeronautical or not. Or what perversion of engineering they are, aeronautical if they are thermo/fluids, aviation engineering if structural and Astronautical if they are ex Bae employees with a loose grip on the real world.