3 MAD Air
Founder & CEO
In my early years as a licensed aircraft dispatcher, I learned about the world of commuter airlines and business aviation without limitations. I dispatched amidst infamous Northeast meteorological conditions and New York Center (ZNY) traffic by day, and haunted the hangars by night. I wanted to learn to "speak maintenance." From wheel bearings to hydraulics to avionics to the PT-6 engines, I needed to get better at conveying and translating messages between pilots and mechanics when mechanicals threatened to delay our quick turns. I was pretty greasy! But I was learning every day and craving more. It was only decades later that I realized how truly rare that experience had been.
When I stepped out of the dispatcher role in 2000, some ten years later, I was dispatching big iron at one of the world's largest operators. I had taken leadership roles within the professional association for certificated aircraft dispatchers. I had met with FAA executives and congressional staffers on issues impacting dispatcher regulations. And I was very active in the early years of what is known today as the FAA-Industry Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) program from which Ground Stops, Ground Delay Programs, Coded Departure Routes, and a myriad of other traffic management initiatives were born. My operational knowledge was very broad and very deep.
I had learned about dispatching aircraft for my airline, how others dispatched at their airlines around the world, about how the airlines collectively collaborate every day, together and with the FAA to ensure the system runs safely and efficiently, about the importance of NAS predictability in the face of weather, mechanical, infrastructure, and capacity uncertainties (all at once), and so many more nuances that became a part of my DNA. I had also been offered an opportunity to enter into an even more complicated space: the underbelly of what makes the system of systems we call the NAS run every day that can only be seen through the lens of the federal government.
And I took it.
For the last 25 years, I have had the privilege of working with some of the most brilliant minds in aviation. They span across federal and state agencies, civilian and defense, think tanks, academia, trade associations, public safety, and industry. I've learned many dialects of our aviation language that are right now evolving as non-traditional aviation missions demand a new way of thinking. The ability to consider them all, the old and the new dialects, as we welcome a new era of aviation terminology, regulation, and technology is why I continue to be offered a seat at very different tables. The future is exciting as we look to normalize flight operations into previously non-navigable airspace, or introduce highly automated, semi-autonomous, and autonomous flight operations into this system of very complex systems.
The more I learn, the more I realize how much is still unknown.
It's that path that continues to lead me forward.
