Jim volunteered for the elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. In one of many deployments, he was sent to Somalia in 1993 (and later served as the army’s representative on the set of Black Hawk Down, the Hollywood film about the Battle of Mogadishu). Jim concluded his army career at the rank of colonel with
a stint at the Pentagon as the division chief of Army Aviation, Current Operations. Along the way, he picked up three advanced degrees, including a master’s in international relations from Auburn University and a master’s in strategic studies from the US Army War College. Jim retired from the US Army in 2008, intent on a job in
civil aviation. His goal was to set up a flight school, but he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to stay in the federal gov- ernment and joined the FAA as an aviation safety inspector (ASI). Over the next several years, he rose steadily through the FAA’s Flight Standards Service, which sets, oversees, and enforces certification standards for US airmen and operators. He concluded his FAA service as the director of General Aviation Safety Assurance, responsible for overseeing safety in the US GA community. In this post, Jim led a staff responsible for more than 2,500
FAA employees with 78 offices around the United States. During his tenure in the job, Jim attempted to address one of the aviation community’s biggest complaints: the perceived lack of standardization in FSDO operations. “When you come to a FSDO with an issue, you shouldn’t
get that FSDO’s answer; you should get the FAA’s answer— which should be explained and enforced in the same way across the country. Where you ask the question or where you apply for the certificate shouldn’t matter,” he says. Jim encouraged the FSDOs to develop shared resources, in part to create operational efficiencies and in part to develop connections between what industry wags call “the individually owned and operated” FSDOs. In his personal life, Jim is close to his two daughters,
Danielle and Shauna, and their families, including his “3.5 grandchildren”— two boys, one girl, and one on the way. He is also an active community volunteer. He is the D.C.–area representative for his university, and he regularly flies for Operation Flying Heroes, an organization that uses an OH-6 and R44 to fly combat-wounded veterans and their families. Te mission is to get the service member, whose last helicopter flight was probably a medical evacuation, back in the air and to introduce their young family members to aviation.
Lifelong Aviator A lifelong aviator, Jim holds ATP ratings for
both helicopters and airplanes and is a dual-rated CFII. He has more than 6,000 hours of flight time, including 1,100 hours in night-vision goggles, and still flies regularly. “If I can fly once a week,
at least, that’s great. If I haven’t flown in a month, then I’m miserable,” he says. Jim runs a partnership
in a Grumman AG-5B Tiger that he hangars at the Montgomery County Airpark (KGAI) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, near his home in Alexandria, Virginia. “Both of my partners are working on their instrument tickets, so providing instrument instruction to them keeps me sharp. I also fly an R44 out of that airport; the owner lets me fly it when- ever I want in
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
