Hunting Aerosurveys

Hunting Aerosurveys
Founded	1944
Ceased operations	2001
Fleet size	See Fleet below
Key people	Percy Hunting

In memory of the July 1952 AS.40 Oxford (G-AIRZ) fatal crash in Kayl.

Hunting Aerosurveys Ltd was a British aerial photography company founded by in 1944. Its operations became more diversified under the name Hunting Surveys.

History[]

The firm incorporated Aerofilms Ltd and the Aircraft Operating Company.^[1] In 1947 it was using three types of aircraft: Austers, a Percival Proctor and a de Havilland Dragon Rapide and planned to acquire one or more Percival Mergansers. The company had contracts for work surveying for tin mining in Nigeria; oil in Arabia, Venezuela and Colombia; timber in Ontario; and mapping in Australia & Hong Kong (in 1963).^[1]

Between 1957 and 1964, Hunting operated a specially converted Auster Autocar for smaller scale aerial survey work.^[2]

In 1960 the firm was merged with Hunting Geophysics Ltd to form Hunting Surveys Ltd.^[3] Threatened with closure in the mid-1980s, it was merged with sister company Hunting Aerofilms Ltd to become simply Aerofilms Ltd in 1987. The new company was able to provide state-of-the-art serial survey work and associated mapping, with the oblique aerial photography that Aerofilms had been undertaking since 1919. In 1997 the company was sold to Simmons Mapping in Somerset, a move that ultimately led to the complete closure of the oblique photography business (and its long-established photo library) in 2006, with the vertical / survey side of the business passing to the Somerset operation.

Fleet[]

References[]

^ ^a ^b "Hunting Aerosurveys". Flight. 51 (1994): 215–6. 13 March 1947. Retrieved 2009-10-31.
^ Jackson, 1973, p. 77
^ "Hunting Survey Changes". Flight. 77 (2653): 87. 15 January 1960. Retrieved 2012-12-11.