Paddy Logan joins Menapia as Managing Director

Paddy Logan has spent his career keeping aviation safe at scale — recently as Head of Operations Assurance at the UK Military Aviation Authority. This week he joined Menapia as Managing Director.

Six years of atmospheric drone work have taught us that the hard part isn't one impressive flight; it's making thousands of flights safe, repeatable and dependable, in real weather and real airspace. That is precisely the problem Paddy has spent his career solving.

Who Paddy is

Before Menapia, Paddy was Head of Operations Assurance at the UK Military Aviation Authority — the body responsible for the safe conduct of military air operations. Earlier roles include Assistant Director of Flying Training in HM Forces, and UAS Capability Manager at Babcock, where he chaired the NIAG industry interface to Flying Training Europe.

Paddy is a veteran of the UK Army Air Corps. Where he piloted helicopters and finished as Second in Command of the UK's first Attack Helicopter Regiment. Amongst the rich experiences this has given him, is an encyclopaedic knowledge of UK geography from the air, which comes in handy when we’re finding new locations to fly!

Why it matters for the work

Routine atmospheric profiling means a lot of flying — already thousands of flights, over oceans, on Icelandic lava fields, up to the edge of controlled airspace. Every one is a real aviation operation with real risk to manage. Gaining the permissions to achieve this is no easy feat, the regulatory environment for drones is complex and continuously changing.

As Managing Director, Paddy leads our delivery planning, safety governance and stakeholder engagement, and serves as our Accountable Aviation Manager under a formal safety management system. In plain terms: the discipline that keeps military flying lines safe now sits behind every campaign we run. That is what lets us take on harder operations — higher autonomy, higher altitudes, higher payloads, in worse conditions — and stand behind them.

What's next

Paddy joins at a busy moment: flying for atmospheric-science partners across the UK and Europe, standing up new test airspace, and pushing our platforms into environments that punish anything less than rigorous operations. Welcome aboard, Paddy.