2018 Tim Dutton

Tim Dutton is the Senior Flight Test Engineer of the Martin Aircraft Company Ltd. He is responsible for safe, effective, and objective experimental, developmental, operational, and certification flight test planning, conduct, and reporting of Martin Aircraft experimental, manned and unmanned, Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL) prototype aircraft (jetpacks). Tim leads interdisciplinary technical and operational teams composed of Martin Jetpack design engineers, aircraft technicians, test pilots, and program managers. Tim leads company flight test safety planning, accident/incident investigations, and flight test readiness/data reviews.

Since 2016, Tim led the entire company’s prototype aircraft flight test safety planning and risk management processes. Specifically, Tim single-handedly re-vamped and authored the Martin Aircraft Test Safety Planning process by integrating the existing Safety Management System, compiling more than 120 Design Engineering technical risks, categorizing and mitigating all technical and safety risks for prototype flight testing, and tailoring the flight test operational safety plan that is practical. He developed dozens of safety mitigations for elevated-risk experimental flight testing of Martin aircraft prototypes.

Tim also serves as the P14/Series 1 VTOL prototype jetpack Lead Project Flight Test Engineer, and was the P12 prototype Project Flight Test Engineer and Project Engineer. He authored and largely conducted the test and safety plans for both prototype flight test programs. Tim safely and effectively planned, directed, and reported on the first free flight test mission of the P14 aircraft. Since August 2017, Tim safely planned, directed, and reported on all Series 1 prototype’s first flight, envelope expansion, initial performance, handling qualities flight test missions. Since May 2017, he safely directed and accomplished all Martin Aircraft high-risk experimental flight test missions of the P14.1 prototype’s first flight, envelope expansion, initial performance, handing qualities, and flight control gain tuning to the aircraft’s maximum specified speed limitations. Between April and November 2016, Tim planned, directed, and reported on 22 high-risk P12.3 prototype jetpack experimental flight test missions, achieving first highest forward speed of 71 km/hr and first Series 1 flight control inceptor handling qualities evaluations. Tim was also acting Test Director during three major prototype unexpected events and incidents, and served as Investigation Officer of these incidents – authoring the technical, safety, and conclusions of each major safety investigation report.

Tim serves as his Company’s primary flight test focal and liaison between Flight Test Operations, Design Engineering, and Aircraft Production/Maintenance. Tim developed new, unique flight test techniques using pilot stick position-based inputs to extrapolate expected attitudes and speeds for VTOL envelope expansion flight testing. Tim also developed new handling qualities flight test techniques derived from both FAR Part 27-1B and ADS-33E Mission Task Elements yet tailored for his Company’s unique VTOL prototype flight envelope. Tim also single-handedly re-vamped his Company’s safety planning processes in a practical approach – accounting for more than 120 engineering risks and reducing the total flight test safety risk elements to less than 20. Tim spear-headed initiatives to combine three Company departments’ 70 design engineers, technicians, pilots, and managers into one cohesive flight test control room and data analysis team. Tim handled all of this intense, high-risk, exploratory, and safety-centric work in just over one year.

Prior to joining the Martin Aircraft Company, Tim was a Senior Flight Physics and Graduate Engineer with QinitiQ, Boscombe Down, UK, for nearly eight years. In this period, Tim safely and effectively planned, conducted, and reported more than 16 hours of Category A developmental flight testing of Royal Air Force heavy multi-engine turbine aircraft - including the Airbus 400, C-130, Nimrod, and several others. Tim is a Distinguished Graduate of the prestigious Empire Test Pilots’ School “Category A” Flight Test Engineers’ Course (2013), in which he learned and applied rigorous experimental flight test skills and competencies by evaluating more than 23 different fighter, trainer, transport, and rotary-wing aircraft types and undergoing gruelling courses in aircraft performance, stability and control, integrated systems, and project management. Tim was awarded the prestigious Hawker Hunter Trophy for Best Fixed-Wing Preview of the F-18F.

Prior to joining QinetiQ, Tim graduated from Loughborough University in 2006 with a MEng in Aeronautical Engineering (honours). Tim is an active and avid glider pilot with an excellent safety record, and is formerly avid hot air balloon pilot, and is a Member and Chartered Engineer of the Royal Aeronautical Society. He was a volunteer at the 2012 London Olympics. Tim is also a community service volunteer in New Zealand; he was a volunteer educator at the 2016 Fendalton Open Air School’s Space and Science Night with the Martin Jetpack static display shown to more than 200 local parents, teachers, and children.

Tim is a sterling example of flight test professionalism safety, and has led our company’s flight test safety and creative culture transformation in such a short period of time. As the current Martin Aircraft experimental jetpack flight testing represents the most complex and hazardous aviation flight testing in New Zealand in recent history, Tim is a beacon of experimental flight test engineering safety and creativity. No other experimental flight test professional is individually more deserving of the SFTE Kelly Johnson Award for such unique and safety-minded flight test engineering accomplishments during this exciting modern transformational age of optionally-piloted VTOL aircraft prototyping in the world’s aerospace industry.