JOHN RICHARD COOPER JR

John Richard Cooper Jr is an FAA Designated Pilot Examiner based at the Delaware County Airport (KDLZ) in Delaware, Ohio, operating under the Columbus Flight Standards District Office. Cooper acts exclusively as a Commercial, Instrument, and Private Pilot Examiner for rotorcraft, meaning he does not conduct airplane checkrides. He is the first and only African American FAA helicopter Designated Pilot Examiner in the state of Ohio. He began his aviation journey by earning a private pilot single-engine land rating as a teenager, later transitioning to helicopters by working a paper route and scrapping Army surplus helicopters to fund his training. He completed his private helicopter add-on in an Enstrom helicopter in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Cooper went on to serve 33 years with the Columbus Division of Police, entering the academy in 1988 and retiring in 2021. He joined the department's "Special Forces" Helicopter Unit in 1991, eventually compiling over 5,900 helicopter flight hours, including more than 3,500 hours of flight instruction. Appointed as the unit's Safety and Training Officer in 1996, he established the first accredited Safety Management System for a U.S. airborne law enforcement unit and led the department to achieve the nation's first Public Safety Aviation Accreditation Commission accreditation in 1999. He also acquired a flight simulator to train pilots on handling inadvertent instrument meteorological conditions and invited local air traffic controllers to join the safety training. For his safety leadership, Cooper received two Columbus Police Medals of Merit, the 2021 Helicopter Association International Law Enforcement Award, and the 2021 Airborne Public Safety Association Safety Award.