MW: I have been drawn to aviation since I was a kid. I built model airplanes, rockets, even kites. If it flew, I liked it. I joined Navy ROTC in college to pursue a career in naval aviation.
After graduating college and being commissioned a second lieutenant in the Marines, I earned my wings as a naval flight officer and served in the A-6 Intruder, a jet bomber. I then attended law school on a U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) program. Because of my passion for aviation, I requested assignment to the Marine Corps Air Station in Iwakuni, Japan. That was a fantastic tour as a junior lawyer. I gained experience as a criminal defense lawyer and a prosecutor and contributed to aviation accident investigations. Off-duty, I served as the president and chief flight instructor of a small flying club, flying all over Japan in small aircraft.
I left active duty after 12 years, accepted a commission in the USMC Reserve, and joined the civil litigation section of a small but prestigious law firm in Raleigh, North Carolina. Of the many fine lawyers who have guided me in my career, my law firm mentor and fellow pilot John Williamson taught me the ropes of handling complicated tort cases with high stakes.
When I was a junior partner in the firm, I was presented an opportunity to go in-house as the first general counsel of a Part 135 air carrier named Presidential Airways. At Presidential, I learned about numerous substantive bodies of law as they related to aviation, while the company grew from roughly 200 employees to over 800, and from about 15 aircraft to over 60.
Wanderlust hit and I accepted a brief, nonlawyer stint to Baghdad, Iraq, as a subject-matter expert in the use of force, rules of engagement, and military professionalism training, helping the U.S. Office of Security Cooperation in Iraq establish training programs for a fledgling Iraqi professional military. Upon my return from Iraq, I accepted employment as general counsel at the parent of a fast-moving and rapidly growing aviation technology family of companies called Satcom Direct.
By this point in my military reserve career, I had served in succession as a legal adviser to the largest operational command in the U.S. Marines, as the chief judge of the USMC Reserve judiciary, as a senior legal adviser to U.S. Strategic Command, and as a judge on the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals. I retired from the bench and from the Marines in 2017.
I met the founder and owner of FlightAware in the fall of 2018, and we hit it off. Like some other brilliant technology entrepreneurs, Daniel Baker is young and energetic. He seemed to know everyone in aviation and was personally passionate about flying. He described a growing company with a bright future, where he felt having an attorney on staff might help. Pulling up stakes and moving to Texas could not have been an easier decision! Since then, FlightAware has grown by multiples and has been recently acquired by a publicly traded company.
MW: On a usual day, I aid management in setting company policies and ensuring compliance with those policies and laws and regulations. When I joined FlightAware, the company did not have robust standardized practices for commercial contracting. Working with management, we agreed upon standard terms, forms to implement them, and sales training and processes to turn them into contracts. The thought leadership demonstrated by management, and that of the sales team in particular, resulted in more efficient contracting on predictable terms that fairly allocated economic risks between company and customer. Sales velocity increased as a direct result. I also managed the company’s insurance program, oversaw the establishment and administration of international subsidiaries, assisted with the occasional labor and employment issue, served as corporate secretary, and ran the gamut of miscellany that leads me to emphasize the “General” in the title “General Counsel.” More recently, my duties include facilitating the integration of our small but highly productive business unit into a much larger and more complex corporate family, harmonizing polices and processes across the organizations to smooth the transition.
MW: Without question, my father had the most influence on my desire to go into aviation. He wanted to be an airline pilot as a young man but found that so much traveling did not afford him as much time with the family as he preferred, and so he ultimately chose a different path. My earliest memory is of riding along in his lap as he piloted a glider when I was two years old. While I was growing up, he fostered my passion for all things flying and shared in it.
And also without question, my wife was the single most influential person regarding my choice to pursue a legal career. I did not come from a family of lawyers and did not know any personally. My parents grew up poor (my dad on a farm in rural North Carolina, and my mom an immigrant war orphan), and neither went to college. My wife, in contrast, came from a family of highly educated professionals, is one herself, and prompted me to consider law school very early in our marriage. Without her unflagging support and her deep respect for the profession, I never would have considered it.
MW: It has highlighted FlightAware’s contribution to the industry and dramatically enhanced the value of our services. Our data, analysis, and reports of the pandemic’s impact have been sought and widely reported in news media. Furthermore, as margins dropped, aviation operators understood that timely decision-making based on reliable information is a key to maximizing asset utilization. Because we “see” nearly all civil aircraft everywhere in near-real time, our customers have a better picture of global traffic flows and conditions that might impact their operations. Our proprietary predictive technology based on machine-learning models allows us to predict when individual airplanes will arrive. Indeed, FlightAware predictions for arrival times are objectively more accurate than aircraft operators’ own in most cases. With better information comes more efficient decision-making, leading directly to less time waiting for gates, shorter turnaround times, fewer missed connections, and ultimately happier travelers who get where they want to be (with their bags!) on time.
MW: Not yet, mainly because standards for tracking and integrating unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into regulated airspace and associated support systems are still coalescing. As a result, the technology which generates the types of data we rely upon to track crewed aircraft has not yet been widely adopted within UAS. But all of that is developing rapidly, and we are watching as it does.
MW: Generally, tackling administrative and legal concerns to allow hard-working, talented aviation professionals to focus on what they do best: making aviation safer, more efficient, and even just more fun for owners, operators, and travelers.
MW: First, one does not need to become a pilot to be a skilled aviation attorney (although doing so might not hurt).
The most practical advice I can give is to explore legal materials . . . specifically related to aviation within your preferred area of practice, many of which are not necessarily intuitive: e.g., labor and employment matters in aviation as governed by the Railway Labor Act; land-use laws on and around airports as regulated by FAA programs; international treaties concerning the use of outer space as it relates to insurance, tort liability, land use, and a host of other legal matters around the launch and control of space vehicles.
Clients need good advice, and that can only come from knowledgeable lawyers. I highly recommend aviation specialization, if available, and materials related to the pursuit of such a certification. For one relatively comprehensive list of “aviation” law topics, see, for example, the “Study Guide” tab under the “Exam Tools and Information” section at the Florida Bar’s website.
MW: Competitiveness coupled with climate sensitivity is driving innovation across every level of the aviation industry—more efficient aircraft, cleaner engines, less impactful manufacturing, new data technologies for efficient operations, and more. And the pull of humanity to explore is drawing our eyes upwards, just as in ancient times, with dreams of space travel and visiting other worlds moving closer to reality. There will be more aircraft of more types (UAS, crewed, and spacecraft), doing more and going farther than ever before. For me, helping bright, engaging, creative entrepreneurs who want to build and field new things is personally rewarding.
MW: I fly emergency services missions and am a standardization/evaluation check pilot with the Civil Air Patrol. I also own and operate a 1962 model Mooney M20-C, a single-engine, four-seat piston aircraft. I bought it in basically original condition and am upgrading its systems over time to state of the art, including digital technology where available.
And, yes, I am positively thrilled to know that ADS-B [Automatic Dependent Surveillance—Broadcast] technology allows me to both better see and be seen. About a quarter of FlightAware employees are active pilots, and all of us are curious, inquisitive, and engaged with our work—it’s quite common for a coworker to discuss one of my own flights with me in comparison to its FlightAware track data, sifting the details to ensure that our systems and processes reflect reality. I well understand that my coworkers, at the very least, are likely watching . . . !
