Future of UK Flight Testing ?

[sets]

As the Title above suggests, I am wondering what the future holds for flight testing as a profession in the UK. Is it possible for someone starting out in the trade now to eek out a 20 or 30 year career in the business here ? To me, it seems many of the traditional avenues are becoming more and more limited in what they offer and many (though not all) of the platforms are on the wrong end of their life cycle. Are UAVs the only long term growth area of the profession in the UK ?
Comments greatly anticipated !!!

[JimmyTAP]

I've been an FTE for over 20 years in the UK and I am struggling to see a future beyond 2010 in manned aircraft. I work for a large multinational defence company that build fewer and fewer aircraft each year. There does seem to be jobs around in development flight testing; just not in the UK.

JT

[Two_Squirrels]

A slightly blinkered approach there from Jimmy! I think he means that there is unlikely to be much past round 2010 in fast jet manufacturers. There will still be a number of rotary wing programmes in the manufacturer side of things, as well as T&E in , e.g. QinetiQ.

[JimmyTAP]

OK, I'll rephrase my statement. I am struggling to see a future beyond 2010 in manned fixed wing aircraft. I don't know about the rotary wing side of things.

The company I work for has gone from 4 or 5 civil aircraft products when I joined to none now. As far as I know the company has no plans for any new manned aircraft (fast jet or otherwise) so at the end of the current flight test programmes , what then?
I'm sorry for being pessimistic but I can see my job vanishing in a couple of years time (or less)

JT

[Genghis the Engineer]

Personally I think that although getting a job in FT is as hard as it's ever been, the field will remain busy for many years.

But, I think that the nature of the job will change a lot. I suspect that the fast jet military test pilot is likely to find himself becoming endangered eventually, whilst most rotary and large aircraft flight testing is going to become much more systems assessment (and thus FTE) oriented, changing the role of the TP (although far from eliminating it for as long as pilots operate aeroplanes - cockpit design and handling qualities still matter, even if they keep shrinking in importance compared to the ever more complex systems on a modern flying machine).

At the same time, surely the role of flight testing UAVs is going to get bigger and bigger, albeit probably requiring a lot of new skills and techniques from FTEs that most of us don't yet have and presumably maintaining some TP involvement, just because of the unique skills in planning and assessment that a TP has.

So yes, I think that there's a 30+ career in FT still to be had - but you'd better understand avionics and UAVs!

And I doubt that the situtation in GA, where the TP is often required to be multitalented and is often an Engineer as well, probably won't change for the foreseeable. There are very few full time flight testers in GA anyway, nor ever have been.

G

[scruggs]

I do hope you're right G. As an aspiring FTE myself, I certainly hope the future for Flight Test Engineers and Test Pilot, both in the UK and internationally, remains bright indeed.

S