Farsound Aviation appoints new quality director

Farsound Aviation has announced the appointment of Graham Mitchell as the company’s new quality director.

Part of Farsound’s senior management team, Mitchell is responsible for quality assurance, inspection and also health and safety within the business. He replaces Phil Northfield who was Farsound Aviation’s technical director for just short of 15 years. Northfield leaves his role to start his planned retirement.

Mitchell has been working in the aerospace industry for 39 years, approximately 35 of those are within quality assurance. During this time, he has been involved in design, manufacturing, MRO, parts distribution and industry groups such as the Aviation Suppliers Association in the USA which has membership of several hundred aerospace parts supply businesses.

Not only is Mitchell a qualified engineer, he is qualified in both mechanical production engineering and in electronic, so his qualifications can be applied across most aspects of aircraft parts.

Lee Kelsey, Farsound Aviation’s sales director commented: “We welcome Graham to the team. Quality is at the core of what the business does because Farsound Aviation supplies components to be used in the maintenance of aircraft engines. The company has a responsibility for ensuring the quality of parts and they meet our customer requirements. Quality is absolutely critical to the customers of Farsound.”

Mitchell has been busy in his first few weeks at Farsound Aviation during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Although there has been a reduction in the demand for parts, thus reducing the inspection throughput, the need to maintain high levels of quality to achieve ultimate aircraft safety is still paramount.

He commented: “Covid-19 has proven that an effective Quality Management System built on the risk based approach of ISO, is resilient to change in working practice and remains effective during such a pandemic.”

Farsound has remained fully operational during the pandemic supporting the needs of the customers within the aircraft MRO industry sector. The business will not return to total site working until a full risk assessment has been carried out by Graham and the senior management team to ensure potential risks to personnel are considered to have been mitigated to an acceptable level.