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Old 23rd Jun 2010, 17:54
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Aero Mad
 
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Stratair

Yes, Stratair and the Devereux House Hotel are mentioned, and I give you this section from the book about Stratair et al
But it was not just Channel Islands airlines which faced ruthless competition. In 1988, another flying club had been formed on Alderney – an alternative to the now firmly established Alderney Flying Club. Ron Wakefield, owner of the Devereux Country House Hotel in Val Fontaine had set up Stratair, and parallel company Stratair Engineering (Alderney) Ltd., as a flight training club with the advantage the pilots could have cheap accommodation. Stratair Flying School started with a Cherokee 140, Cherokee Six and a twin-engined Aztec, all built by Piper in the USA, before expanding in 1990 by adding five twin-seater Tomahawk aircraft to the fleet.
According to a visitor who stayed there, “it was great fun sharing a hotel with loads of other pilots. The gesticulations of planes doing this or that after dinner or in the bar were hilarious.” He did some training at the flying school and also remembered “seeing a Stratair instructor running down the road in the headlights of the mini-bus trying to catch a rabbit with the mini-bus full of flying students looking askance at the thought they would be flying with this nutter!” The flying school had shut by the mid 1990s.
March 1988 also saw a new flying training school being set up on Alderney alongside Stratair and the Alderney Flying Club. Sally Williamson, a qualified nurse, set up Alderney Flying Training with one Cessna 152. It was soon a regular feature for the Alderney Journal to show who had recently passed their Private Pilot’s Licences, however Alderney Flying Training had been discontinued by September 1990 in favour of Williamson, having gained enough hours, pursuing her career as a First Officer with Aurigny on its new Shorts 360 aircraft.
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