Page 38 - AAA JULY - AUGUST 2013 Online Magazine

PROFILE

THAT’S ME

How would it feel to have a business card with ‘Test Pilot’ as the job title?
There can’t be many people who carry a card like that – but Airbus staff pilot
Frank Chapman goes one better. His job title is Experimental Test Pilot.

How did you get to be a test pilot? Second, in a low-level mock dogfight practice with Jaguars
I worked in the RAF for 16 years after getting a scholarship, in Germany, feeling the hairs on my neck prickle and sensing
flying Harriers and Phantoms. But as I’d trained as an engineer rather than seeing a free-flying German Phantom that again I
I was always interested in the engineering and design side of missed by metres. We were so close the navigator never saw it.
things. So in 1989, I applied for a Test Pilot course at Istres
in France. After that I went to work on development projects What are the big things we will see in the next 10 years?
at Farnborough, flying Buccaneers, Hawks, Tornado and The biggest major advances will be in engine technology,
Eurofighter tests and so on. Then I was transferred off to probably open rotor power plants. After 2025 or 2030, we will
Florida to fly F16 tests for the Typhoon programme. probably see some airframe design changes that make the
most of new engine developments. The other big changes we
Why did you move to Airbus after all that military work? will see will be in pilot training, with evidence-based training
After the F16 programme, I was offered promotion but it meant becoming the standard.
a desk job – and I didn’t want that. I wanted to carry on flying.
So I joined Monarch airlines flying A320 and 330s, and assumed What is the biggest advance you have seen since you
I would do that until I retired. But then I had a call from Airbus started flying?
in 2004 asking if I’d like to join them, and that was it. It’s not really in the flying, but in computer-aided design and
modelling. Today’s accuracy rate is much closer to reality; it’s
What’s the best part of the job? never 100% but we get a very good idea of what to expect. Also
It’s a combination of the flying and technical challenges. fly-by-wire. The A320 was the first commercial aircraft to use it,
Working with the young and enthusiastic engineers at Airbus with 286 and 386 technology. Today’s FBW is much more robust
is a real privilege too; it’s really multicultural which is a bonus, and has better redundancy though we are still learning – it’s still
and there is loads of variety. a flying machine that the pilot feels and has to understand.
Can you describe the best flying moment?
I have two; the first long [cross-country flight] my wife did after Born in the UK in 1958, Frank Chapman graduated from
getting her PPL, landing at Toronto past the sunset over Lake Oxford University in engineering science before training as
Ontario after flying from Florida. Unforgettable. And second, a pilot with the UK’s RAF. After a spell flying Harriers and
taking a two-hour flight in an A10 and using live rounds in the Phantoms, he attended French Test Pilot Academy then
Gatling – the smell and the shuddering, it was like the thing worked at Farnborough, specialising in head-up display,
was alive even after it had stopped firing. electro-optics and helmet-mounted display systems.
Following that, he worked on the F16 development
And the scariest moment? programme in the US, before joining Airbus as experimental
Again, I have two. First, when I was training in a Jet Provost, test pilot on A380 and A330 MRTT programs. He is now one
pulling up through a gap in the clouds and getting a face-full of of the project pilots for the A350XWB programme, and has
cruising Cessna, which I missed by about five to seven metres. racked up an amazing 12,500 flying hours.

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