Military Career
Upon graduating high school, de Troy applied for a French Army aviation position and was accepted for training. “They proposed that I fly helicopters, and I agreed because I just wanted to be a pilot. It was fun and I’ve never stopped flying helicopters anytime in my career,” de Troy says. He got his rotorcraft wings in 1984, and flexed them by flying the Alouette II and Alouette III for six years close to the German border.
Next, he was selected to be an instructor pilot, a position he took because it would keep him in the air. “I wanted to fly, fly, fly all the time,” he says, and his instructing aircraft was a great one — the Gazelle. “It’s a super fun helicopter to fly when it’s not loaded down for deployment,” he says. “When it’s light, it’s very agile and very fast, like a sports car.” Sports cars are mostly for the young and carefree. “As you get a bit older, you start to consider other things,” de Troy says. With his wife Veronique and children to consider, de Troy joined the army aviation commissioned officer course and turned to flying heavier helicopters like the Puma on many deployments in diverse places: the former Yugoslavia, Albania, Chad, Cameroon, Congo,
and...you get the idea. In 2001, the army gave him leadership of an army logistics supply squadron that flew more than 10,000 hours in two years under his command. The following two years, he served as an army aviation safety officer. Immediately after that, it was off to Morocco as an expert advisor, where de Troy helped set up two training programs for Moroccan helicopter pilots. “I was the only non-Moroccan pilot at the Moroccan base and I flew a lot. It was a great experience for sure,” he says.
After Morocco, de Troy headed back to France’s army aviation school where he eventually became commander for all helicopter aviation training. He retired from his military career in December 2013 after 31 years of service. After joining the army as a non- commissioned officer, de Troy left as a lieutenant colonel. “It was a great career,” he recalls.
Civilian Career
De Troy retired from the army, but hardly from flying and training. He wasted no time — not even a day — transitioning from the military to a civilian career. How so swiftly? About half a year before his military retirement, friends at Airbus approached the aviation training commander to gauge his interest in becoming the training director for their Helisim flight simulator center. After he learned he could still engage in flying, de Troy was sold. “The day after my military retirement, I started as their training director. It was an easy move,” he says with record-setting understatement.
That first quick career move became a global move in 2018 from Marignane, France, to Grand Prairie, Texas, when Helisim moved de Troy to manage the launch of its new training center at Airbus Helicopters’ North American headquarters. De Troy was ready to go, but his wife had one requirement to make the move. “She said, ‘OK, but when we move, I want one thing: I want to drive a big red pickup truck,’” de Troy chuckled. Veronique now drives her big red
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Dodge Ram like a Texas cowgirl. (This anecdote was originally reported by Dan Reed in HAI’s Rotor magazine.)
With his wife situated with suitable Texas wheels, de Troy jumped into building a visionary training center, literally from the ground up. “We started building from a patch of dirt and an old volleyball playground. Building from scratch was super exciting,” he says.
That excitement is well-founded. Helisim’s original center in France serves approximately 3,000 trainees a year with seven simulators, most rated at Level D. Texas is quickly catching up to match the pace in France. Texas started with an advanced H145 simulator and just began operating a new Thales Reality H full-motion flight simulator. Helisim expects to add a simulator for the H160 within the next couple of years. The Grand Prairie facility is large enough to also house an H175 simulator. Although the COVID pandemic curtailed the number of trainees coming through, Helisim in Texas is expecting to build up to 3,000 trainees annually. It currently serves up to 1,500 pilots.
De Troy deeply cares that those pilots leave flying safer than when they arrived. “I personally want our trainees to be safer pilots when they leave. If they need some extra minutes in the sim to understand something that will make them safer, my first inclination is not to charge them extra. Let’s learn what we need to learn to be safer in the air and prevent an accident,” he says. “Most accidents are pilot induced, and better training can reduce those types of accidents.” When asked what is the key to success for pilots, de Troy answers, “For pilot success, you must stay humble (he is not above getting — and making — coffee for subordinates). I really think a pilot who is not humble is in danger.”
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