Meet Our Founder

A track record of innovation and achievement.

Justin's career started with his education at Oxford University, followed by a Masters' degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. In his research thesis, Justin built a 1-DOF robot arm with active/variable dynamics. Justin's adviser, Prof Dave Akin, rated Justin's thesis "the best I've seen at the Masters' level – rivals many PhDs."

In the Royal Air Force, after 4 years flying Harrier aircraft on the front line, Justin progressed into the engineering world. He attended USAF test pilot school, finishing top of his class in both flying and academics before leading the UK's fly-by-wire Harrier research programme.

In this programme he led the technical team in pioneering the highly controversial Unified flight control methodology, developing the control strategy and assembling the experimental data to first convert the US govt representatives, and subsequently Lockheed Martin, to the adoption of Unified for the F-35. Today, it is unquestioned that the correct decision was made.

Following the JSF programme's adoption of Unified, the UK MoD began to investigate the feasibility of ship "rolling vertical landings" (SRVL). Early simulator trials at NASA Ames showed this landing technique unviable in high sea states, leading to loss of aircraft control. Justin returned to the research debate and led the UK programme at QinetiQ to solve this problem.

Approaching the UK MoD with a proposal, one legendary meeting commenced with the statement from the MoD "if you want us to spend any money on this, you are going to need a case written in blood." An hour and a half later, Justin had secured the research contract. Leading the technical team once again, Justin invented and patented the Bedford Array landing system, that rendered SRVL safe in high sea states and is implemented on HMS Prince of Wales today.

The dawn of eVTOL led Justin back to the research world. Joining Joby Aviation in 2018 as chief test pilot, Justin led the team for 3 years implementing and evolving Unified flight control for the civil market, before moving to Vertical Aerospace in Bristol to do the same.

Justin has won the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics "F E Newbold" trophy for outstanding creative contributions to the advancement and realization of powered lift flight, and the AIAA Wright Brothers Lectureship awarded for the recent accomplishment of a significant "First in Aeronautical Engineering."

In 2025, Justin launched Flyer AI Ltd, applying his unique innovative engineering abilities with a vision to build time machines – transforming the skies above us, for all, with autonomous aviation – starting with small package delivery.

As you might expect from Justin's track record, Flyer's delivery drone design has innovative features that will decimate costs of manufacture and operation.

"Intelligent design redefines what is achievable, and that's what I do," Justin Paines, Founder and CEO of Flyer AI Ltd.