RAY Mann, the controversial entrepreneur behind West Wales Airport at Aberporth, has died at the age of 76, it has been confirmed.

The Tivyside understands that the former Rolls-Royce apprentice, pilot, and Chief Executive of the Ross-on-Wye-based Mann Organisation, passed away in hospital at Hereford last week.

Only last month it emerged that an application to update facilities had been submitted to county planners, with hopes five major aerospace companies would be operating from the site next year.

But critics claimed the airport never got off the ground – while an anticipated local jobs boom did not materialise.

“I always found Ray Mann to be very affable, kind and courteous,” Gethin James, who got to know him during his stint as a county councillor, told the Tivyside.

“He was also very enthusiastic, so I imagine it must have been very disappointing that many of his hopes did not come to fruition.

“His attitude was: ‘I’ve provided the runway and infrastructure – now it’s for other people to provide the planes’.”

Mr Mann bought the former site of RAF Aberporth – a former World War Two airfield at Blaenannerch – in 2001 with the intention of transforming it into a centre for military and civilian drone research providing hundreds of local jobs.

Hopes were high that the airfield and adjoining technology park Parc Aberporth would achieve his expectations when an ambitious £5m scheme to re-develop the site was unveiled in January 2007.

Plans included the building of a two-storey 48-bedroom hotel, a training centre, new terminal building and control tower plus two large hangers and a new fire station, while a new access was created off the main A487 road to lengthen the runway.

Hailing the move as ‘a huge step forward’ Mr Mann confidently predicted this would result in West Wales Airport being on a par with City airport in London and becoming the main airport for west Wales.

“It is the strangest airport in the world,” a national newspaper commented in June 2013. “No departure boards, no baggage reclaim and (oddest of all) no air crew.”

But having been the base for unmanned aircraft operations since 2004, West Wales Airport increasingly focused on the testing of unmanned aircraft systems after securing a £2.5m Ministry of Defence contract in April 2014.

In August 2020 the-then Secretary of State for Wales Simon Hart visited the airport to view the latest unmanned aircraft being developed.

He also saw the Thales Watchkeeper, used by the British Army, and heard about plans for the airfield to develop further as a centre of the unmanned aircraft industry.

Yet the Watchkeeper programme also sparked controversy with several crashes being recorded.

The most serious happened in June 2018 when a drone crashed less than a mile away from Penparc school pupils taking part in their sports day.

It was said to have been the fifth involving tests with the devices.