Meet Sue and Jim Gardner of Gardner Aviation Services: GoAERO's FAA Certification Experts

Bruce Springsteen famously sang, “Baby, We Were Born to Run.” With a nod to the rock legend known as “The Boss,” if Sue and Jim Gardner had a theme song, it would be “Baby, We Were Born to Fly.”

Indeed, Sue’s first time in an airplane at age 10 was her personal “AH-Ha” moment. “I knew right then it was where I belonged and there was nothing else I ever wanted to do.”

This desire was cemented when she piloted her first plane at 14 years old, learning at a private grass airstrip. “My father loved to fly,” she relates. “His passion was my passion. And flying is how I met Jim. It’s our passion.”

In fact, Jim – who also has many years of experience in the pilot’s seat – began flying when he was 17 years old and realized that being in the cockpit “was natural, comfortable, and where I was meant to be.”  And he remembers quite fondly that when he was giving flight lessons to students, “I would take them to Sue’s airstrip to solo them and to see Sue.”

It was a match made not on an app but in the skies for Sue and Jim, who both went on to long and distinguished careers in – naturally – aviation. Sue was the first woman to be a pilot at Air Wisconsin, before she moved on to work at the Federal Aviation Administration. Jim was a management pilot for a different airline before he moved on to work at the Federal Aviation Administration. Collectively, the couple logged more than 60 years at the FAA before retiring at the end of 2018. Jim retired as a senior executive in FAA’s Flight Standards and Sue as the FAA’s National Aviation Events Specialist, team member supporting the development of sUAS and unique aircraft, and program lead for the Sport Pilot and LSA rulemaking – among the many National FAA projects she led while in the Flight Standards General Aviation and Commercial Division.

After their distinguished government careers, the couple founded, owns and operates Gardner Aviation Services, LLC., an aviation consulting firm that focuses on consulting and providing regulatory support for aviation-related projects in both general aviation and air carrier activities for individuals and organizations needing professional and technical assistance.

So, it is more than appropriate that when GoAERO founder Gwen Lighter approached the Gardners to serve as the global challenge’s FAA advisors – a position they also held several years earlier for the GoFly Prize.  It was a perfect landing. In this role, Jim and Sue will engage with all active GoAERO Stage 2 and 3 teams who may need support navigating the FAA aircraft certification pathways.

“Their vast expertise and their experience with the GoFly Prize provide them the tools and strong relationships with the FAA to help all our Stage 2 and 3 teams identify and navigate their way through the FAA certification pathways in an efficient manner,” says Gwen, noting that the Gardners will provide one-on-one support to each team on FAA certification, as well as another five hours of support as each team processes the required FAA paperwork for both their aircraft and their pilot/operator.

All this assistance is both timely and essential, the Gardners explain. The past five years have seen substantial growth in the types of flyers, both unmanned and manned, now available, as well as significant advancements in the technology associated with building and operating them.

But to paraphrase Spider-Man – or more accurately, Voltaire, who first coined the phrase in his work “Candide”:  With great progress comes great responsibility.

“There are roadblocks that need to be addressed and overcome before the individuals and teams who are developing GoAERO flyers can even turn on the ignition,” Jim relates. Foremost among them is “ensuring the appropriate level of safety,” beginning even before the point of take-off, continuing with being in the air, and through landing. ”The FAA is working to streamline the process but that process still exists.”

The advantage the GoAERO teams have is that because Sue and Jim previously worked with the GoFly Prize teams, steps have already been made to accelerate the streamlining, Jim points out. Now, for example, there are specific test sites where teams can practice with their safety equipment in a contained environment.

Even so, GoAERO’s hyper-focus on developing an entirely new class of emergency response flyers requires the consideration and implementation of many safety measures, Sue says.

She cites disaster emergencies in which there may be survivors. To perform rescue missions, she explains, air space would need to be shut down so that the flyers can operate safely and uninhibited. And just as with all planes and helicopters, emergency response vehicles themselves have mandatory and very specific and complex procedures and other measures that must be enacted and technology that must be fully engaged during their missions.

As but one example, Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) needs to be employed. This is an aviation surveillance technology that allows aircraft to transmit their position and other data to control towers, enabling them to be tracked safely.

“The same layers of safety and protocols that firefighters use for their helicopters and water bomber planes must be integrated into all GoAERO flyers,” Sue stresses. In fact, she adds emphatically, the GoAERO flyers fall under the aegis of public safety aircraft and “must meet all public safety regulations to be certified.”

To do so, Sue and Jim meet monthly with the FAA and GoAERO to ensure that the competitors in the global challenge integrate all safety measures, so if they are not yet meeting the requirements, they have the time to make the essential fixes.

Other FAA requirements are designed to address vehicle size and weight, where and when a vehicle can fly, and licensing and registration – all unmanned aircraft systems must be registered with the FAA.

Interestingly, the international GoAERO teams are enthusiastic about the stringent FAA regulations. In many cases, the regulations in their home countries may not be as developed as those in the U.S., so “we evaluate their foreign certification to ensure that each one meets or exceeds FAA standards,” Sue notes.

The overarching goal, Sue and Jim say, is to make the FAA certification of all GoAERO flyers, wherever they hail from, and whether they be unmanned or manned, as simple and as cost-effective as possible.

“Having a vehicle be able to respond to an emergency quicker and more effectively than what is available today,” Sue declares, “couldn’t be more exciting.”

From their first flights as teenagers to their current role guiding the next generation of aviation innovators, the Gardners continue to fulfill their destiny in the skies;  they truly were born to fly.