Who is Dan Parsons?
Dan Parsons is a committed and extremely curious aviation safety & operations professional. His day job is as a manager for Wisk Aero as he looks to support the development of infrastructure to support autonomous advanced air mobility.
Beginning his aviation life with a Bachelor's degree in the subject, Dan started his career with the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association of Australia (AOPAA) on general advocacy and management tasks before deciding to specialise in airports. This decision took Dan across Australia to Perth, where he travelled the countryside, visiting airports of all shapes and sizes and carrying out airport inspections and safety officer training.
The desire to achieve more in safety led Dan to join the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) in 2008. Initially, his role involved airport safety and compliance auditing, but it also involved a great deal of safety management system evangelism and technical advice on standards.
After a couple of years with the Australian regulator, Dan ventured back into the private sector and took a position with a mining company running their airports in central Queensland. Their primary airport, Moranbah, was experiencing exceptional growth through the mining boom and needed expert attention. And then, almost as quickly as it grew, the end of the boom signalled a drop in activity with significant pressure on cost and efficiencies. Dan's time with the mining company saw its airport capability grow into a professional unit that could operate the airport competently and do so at a significantly lower cost while providing confidence to its executive leadership team that safety risks were being managed.
Greener (and cooler) pastures beckoned in 2016, and Dan moved to Queenstown, New Zealand, to take on the new role of Airport Operations Manager. Again, strong growth provided a welcome challenge in a spectacular resort setting.
And almost as quickly as you read that sentence, Dan left NZ for the Middle East and joined the QCAA. This opportunity provided Dan with extensive exposure to ICAO SARPs, the European regulatory suite and working in a highly diverse cultural environment.
With the many disruptions to life that came with COVID-19 in 2020, Dan moved back to Australia and returned to CASA in 2021. This role focused on regulatory development and involved a great deal of liaison with ICAO and attendance at international panels and working groups. It also introduced Dan to the concept of Vertiports. As part of a crack team of airport and safety professionals, Dan helped developed world leading guidance on the design of vertiports.
Dan turned this work into a new role with the advanced air mobility company, Wisk. As part of the Australian and airline teams within Wisk, Dan is working towards bring autonomous air taxis to life and to Australia.
And despite all this daily chaos, Dan loves to write and share thoughts, videos, stories and lessons learned. The reasons for the website are two-fold. Firstly, to spread the airport safety message; to educate; to discuss; to ramble on. The less charitable agenda is to use this medium to formulate and refine Dan's ideas about airport safety.
Dan first commenced blogging in 2011 as a way of trying to tackle the recurring problems he would see on aerodrome safety audits. Sharing the issues one airport was having and providing advice on how to avoid them could allow other airports to improve before audit time. After moving into a different area of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, Dan's writing shifted towards higher-level concepts but focused on aviation safety and risk management.
In 2013, Dan was the launch author for the new website New Airport Insider. These articles were very much airport-related, and here Dan has written about wildlife hazard risk management, the Australian airport industry and airport people power.
In the latest iteration of this website, Dan will again be writing about airport operational matters with a few tweaks. Dan is still very interested in safety, customer service, internet services, ground transport, and online training. What better topics to write about here?
Dan always likes to connect with like-minded airport professionals, so please post comments, email him, follow him on twitter or make him a connection on LinkedIn.
Selected Projects
In 2016, the State of Qatar commenced a program to align it’s aviation safety regulations with the European aviation regulatory framework. New EU-based aerodrome regulations were initially promulgated in 2017 but the application of parts of this model were not possible in the Qatari context. Over the next two years, I analysed the local environment and, with the help of my colleagues, developed some appropriate solutions which I formulated into the European model. These amended regulations were promulgated in March 2020.