Doswell Award: Chuck McKinnon receives lifetime achievement award
Chuck McKinnon is this year’s recipient of the NBAA John P.

Chuck McKinnon is this year’s recipient of the NBAA John P. “Jack” Doswell award, granted for lifelong individual achievement in supporting business aviation. At age 95 and newly remarried to Jan Barden of Aviation Personnel International, McKinnon looks back to a long lifetime of involvement with aviation. “I’ve been interested in aviation since I knew there was such a thing,” he told AIN. Building model airplanes when Lindbergh made his famous transatlantic flight to Le Bourget, McKinnon couldn’t know that he would be closely connected with the Paris airport later in life.

A student at Georgia Tech, one of the 10 schools in the Civilian Training Program in 1939, McKinnon learned to fly there. After graduating with degrees in engineering and business, he went to work as a junior engineer for Stone and Webster, the engineering company that helped build Hoover Dam.