Former AHIA president Ray Cronin has been appointed Chair of the Australian Helicopter Industry Future Foundation (AHIFF).
Cronin, owner and operator of Kestrel Aviation out of Mangalore, Victoria, had been vice president or president of AHIA for 10 years prior to stepping down at RotorTech last June. He was replaced by Jim Norrie of United Aero Helicopters, which has released Cronin to focus more on AHIFF.
AHIFF was founded in 2022 after the Cameron family gifted $500K to the Australian Helicopter Industry Association (AHIA) for developing awareness of aviation engineering in young people in order to combat the loss of engineers through retirement and the lack of people entering the system.
AHIFF operates separately from AHIA, and is overseen by Cronin and board members Paul Tyrrell and Peter Boyle.
The foundation kicked off in October 2022 with a series of workshops around Australia designed to introduce aviation engineering careers to young people, and the board has plans to repeat the workshops in the future.
In June, AHIFF awarded $3000 training scholarships to six young people to assist them with engineering training.