Ernest Oscar Tips

Ernest Oscar Tips, born on 2 October 1893 at Tielrode and died on 10 March 1978 in Brussels, was a Belgian aircraft designer who co-founded the Fairey Aviation Company in 1915 and its Belgian subsidiary Avions Fairey in 1931. The youngest of 13 children, he was building aircraft with his brother Maurice by 1908. He fled Belgium at the start of the First World War, learned aeronautical engineering at Short Brothers in England and became the first employee of the newly formed Fairey company, where he was a close friend of Dick Fairey. In 1931 he returned to Belgium to create Avions Fairey at Gosselies airfield and designed the Tipsy light aircraft there, including the Tipsy Belfair and the Tipsy Nipper. He reorganised the company after the Second World War and retired in March 1960.