Chief Academic Officer | International Test Pilots School
David is currently the Chief Academic Officer at the International Test Pilots School in London Ontario. David has been flying for more than 30 years and has over 20 years of flight test experience in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and civil industry.
David served 7 years as a fixed wing pilot in the Australian Army flying Pilatus Porter and Nomad before transferring to the RAN to fly helicopters. He served in the RAN as an operational and test pilot for 14 years, flying Seahawk, Sea King, AS350, and Sea Sprite before entering the civil sector. While in the RAN David was involved in First of Class Flight Trials, mission system testing, as well as fundamental performance and handling qualities testing. He served as the project test pilot for the Navy’s Sea Sprite acquisition program and as the Navy’s Chief of Flight Test before retiring in 2008.
Following retirement from the RAN David worked as a lecturer, human factors researcher, and flight instructor at Swinburne University before returning to the flight test profession. As a civil test pilot and engineer David has worked on multiple programs including chief test pilot at GippsAero for the GA10 certification program, test pilot and flight dynamics engineer for an eVTOL program, human factors test lead for RAAF air to air refueling HMI rectification program, as well as numerous minor modification programs on Part 23 aircraft and Part 27 and 29 rotorcraft. During this time David developed and delivered several short courses on flight testing for the New Zealand and Australian aerospace industry.
In addition to flight test David has worked as a flight instructor, a production test acceptance engineer at Boeing, a system safety and seaworthiness engineer for Anduril Industries, and has taught reliability engineering and system safety to the Republic of Singapore Air Force for more than 10 years. David holds flight test and flight analyst delegations (FAA DER equivalent) with the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority and New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority.
David is a graduate of the Empire Test Pilots School (ETPS) and in addition to his engineering degree holds a Master of Science in Flight Dynamics from Cranfield University and a PhD in Mathematics from Swinburne University.