What kind of people will I work with in a flight test career? 4 Kinds of Flight Test Engineering Team Members

A flight test team is made up of so many different team members that it is impossible to list them all. Here are four specific kinds of flight test engineering crew members.

Aircrew
Ground crew
Management team
Tech experts

It takes the coordinated effort of hundreds of people to make dreams take flight, and this is just a small sample of the amazing team members you will get to work with in a flight test career.

Aircrew
Aircrew includes loadmasters, like those depicted, flight test engineers, instrumentation engineers, test pilots, test conductor, test director, aerial photographers, flight surgeons, and many more.

Ground Crew
The ground crews support the test team in countless ways–maintenance personnel, both crew chiefs on the line and back shop systems experts and supervisors, logistics test teams, and other support personnel.

Management Team
Business analysts, program managers, executive assistants, operations schedulers–this team is the oil that keeps the flight test machine running and the gas in the fuel tank. Our magnificent airplanes would just be drawings on a page if we didn’t have plans, programs, and payment. This part of the team is truly the rest of the iceberg, the enormous part hidden beneath the surface.

Tech Experts
Sitting behind desks strewn with slide rules, blueprints, schematics and the like is a host of engineers and scientists who might not even see the airplanes fly, but their input in the smallest details ensures that the ideas get off the ground.

The fact is, we need you on one of these teams. Which one would you like to hear more about?

Don’t just imagine your dreams–explore them, because we need you. The aerospace industry needs innovators. The flight test community is looking for the next Neil Armstrong, and that’s what this column is about, helping you take that next small step.

Thanks for reading Launch Your Flight Test Career #8. Send a message to @FlightTestFact on Twitter to ask questions about launching your flight test career.

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