The Centenary Year of the Society was launched by the Honorary President, His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, by his Foreword in the Centenary Journal. “The hundred years of the Royal Aeronautical Society spans the whole romantic, even fantastic, story of Man's adventure into the air and into space.”

The Annual Reports and the Journal throughout these hundred years have chronicled the story. This Annual Report —the hundred and first—records the contrasting interests of this past year: the advent of the Centenary has resulted in the somewhat nostalgic writings on the past, and considerations on the future have been caused by the Plowden Report.