In September 1966 the Landlord, The Co-operative Society, issued a possible death blow. With five years of a seven year lease left the Club was told that they were in contravention of their lease, and if £3,000 was not immediately spent on hanger refurbishment the whole airfield would be returned to agriculture forthwith. They also felt that the bigger business aircraft were too big, and they were to stop flying immediately. This alone represented a loss to the Club of £2,000 per year. The Club was still very short of money and appealed to its members to pay up their arrears of membership dues. This met with very little response. The Co-op issued notice to quit and rejected an appeal for clemency. There was an immediate uproar in the local press, and firms appealed for the airfield to be kept open, they relied upon quick and easy mobility for they executives and anyway, what would Leicester be without a General Aviation field, it was indispensable. The engineer in the hanger who looked after the Clubs aircraft was one of those owed money, and he flew the two Austers he had been working on to Nottingham airfield and immobilised and impounded them until he was paid. That left the Club with only one aircraft to generate income - things were desperate indeed. There were 15 creditors who were offered about half the money owed if they forced the Club into liquidation. Leicester City Council joined in the fight to keep the Club and the airfield open, and a meeting with the Chamber of Commerce was held in November 1966. The Club was only seeking backing with their representations to the Co-op, not asking for money. The Co-op fought back with shattering proposals to stop all business and executive flying from the airfield. It seems they refused to negotiate with a syndicate of four businessmen who said that they had "taken over the Club", and were proposing amongst other things to close two of the runways according to the local press. The Co-op said they were only prepared to accept private flying, anything else was a violation of the lease. The consortium of businessmen then managed to persuade the creditors to accept a long term full settlement for the £2000 owed instead of forcing the Club into liquidation, and secretly tried to sell the Club as a going concern, which of course they were not entitled to do since they did not own the Club. In April 1967 a Bank Loan was negotiated and paid off all the outstanding money. The Club then took on John Baxter as full time Airport Manager and Secretary, and had two full time and one part time flying instructors, and three Cessna 150 aircraft for training. These were leased from VicAir Ltd.; a firm set up by one of the four businessmen mentioned before. |