Prince Charles in Broughton today celebrating 75 years of aircraft manufacture

Prince Charles will visit Airbus, Broughton today to mark the firm’s 75th anniversary.

The Prince an accomplished pilot, will meet employees and tour the North Factory before officially opening the new Visitors Centre.

The Prince inspecting a plane from the Royal Flight before taking the controls himself. You Tube/Pathe

The wing manufacturing site which is the largest employer in the region employing over 6000 people, recently won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise.

A bit of history courtesy of Wikipedia:

The factory was established early in the Second World War as a shadow factory for Vickers-Armstrongs Limited. The factory produced Wellingtons and Lancasters.

Post-war the factory was used by Vickers to build 28,000 aluminium prefab bungalows. 

The RAF’s No. 48 Maintenance Unit was formed at Hawarden on 1 September 1939 and until 1 July 1957 stored, maintained and scrapped many thousands of military aircraft, including the Handley Page Halifax, Wellingtons, Horsa gliders and De Havilland Mosquitoes.

Since the early 1970s the Broughton factory, was part of British Aerospace operations.

It is now owned and operated by Airbus, and has continued to be the centre of wing production for all models of Airbus commercial aircraft.

Here’s how news outlets in the region are reporting the visit and events today:

Daily Post Headline is telling us all to ‘LOOK’ which is a bit ‘spammy’ and kind of belittles a great piece by Owen Hughes looking back at 75 years with some classic pictures.

DP – LOOK: Airbus UK Broughton site to celebrate 75th Anniversary with Royal visit

ITV’s take is a headline and around 40 words, oddly no mention of HRH however, at some point it will ‘convert’ into a ‘live’ blog when things start to happen in Broughton. 

ITV – 75th anniversary of aircraft manufacturing at Broughton

BBC lead with the fact Prince Charles will be visiting, but then you would expect that from a royal broadcaster, again some great photo’s.

BBC – Prince Charles to visit Airbus Broughton factory

The Leader – …..

As well as visiting Airbus the Prince and Camilla, the Countess of Chester will be performing duties in Lache and in Chester itself.

We will, of course, be skimming social media sites for any relevant ‘user generated content‘ during the course of the day…