Stuart Keenan made Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society

We are pleased to announce that our previous Chair ARPAS-UK, Stuart Keenan, of ARPAS-UK Member Frazer-Nash Consultancy has recently been awarded the grade of Fellow by the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS), the highest grade attainable by the organisation.

Stuart said, “It is a great honour to be recognised by the RAeS for my achievements, particularly around the excellent cutting-edge drone development work my team has been involved with over recent years. This includes the development of novel UAS concepts as well as enabling future drone use cases by pushing the boundaries of regulation whilst remaining acceptably safe.”

Congratulations Stuart on this fantastic achievement!

Stuart is the Head of Unmanned Air Systems at Frazer-Nash Consultancy, and his vision is for drones to be commonplace in a way that safely benefits society. Stuart’s area helps organisations to make the most of drones, with 2 key focus areas: drone consultancy services, and the manufacture of bespoke drone systems for niche customer use cases.

Stuart is a CAA qualified SUAS pilot, and the SUAS Accountable Manager for his company, as well as being the UAS technical expert for safety and regulation. Under Stuart’s leadership, the Frazer-Nash drone business has grown in under 5 years from very little to a turnover of £multi-millions, and he is now leading activity to allow Frazer-Nash’s expertise to benefit the exciting growth areas of UAM and UTM.

Stuart has a background in aviation safety, developed during his 16-year career as an RAF engineer officer, which culminated in him designing, developing and introducing the Air Safety Information Management System (ASIMS) across the whole of the UK military air domain – ASIMS has become the tool which has underpinned significant increases in air safety performance standards across Defence aviation.

Stuart is a chartered engineer and a Member of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and has a BEng(Hons) Aeronautical Engineering degree from Loughborough University, as well as a Master of Business Administration degree from Cranfield University.

March 2023