Ryan Aerospace: a global innovator that found its wings on the Gold Coast

The Gold Coast Economic Outlook 2024 report has been released and it shows the Gold Coast is outperforming forecasted growth and overall state and national figures, becoming Australia's fastest growing economy in recent years.

We speak to the founder of Gold Coast company RYAN AEROSPACE who over the past 2 decades has turned his company into a multi-million dollar business.

The global reach of RYAN AEROSPACE can be measured by the impressive profile of customers it deals with every day, including the likes of Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Airbus Helicopters.

Yet the growth of the business over the past 2 decades is testament to the ingenuity and drive of founder Chris Ryan, who founded the company in 2005 after making a life-changing discovery when training for a helicopter licence a few years earlier.

The Nerang-based Ryan Aerospace has found its niche as a leading developer of high-tech flight simulators for military customers around the world, with the US Air Force, Navy and Army among its biggest clients.

“Using our technology, our customers can train more people more quickly and that’s been a game changer in addressing the pilot shortage that has been such a problem for the military,” says Ryan.

“We also provide training outcomes at a fraction of the cost of traditional training and simulation.”

While it was originally established in the NSW regional city of Taree, the company’s fortunes soared after relocating to the Gold Coast in 2012 with demand for its virtual reality-driven flight simulators finally gaining flight in recent years.

“The business really started to take off from 2018, when I started leveraging virtual reality technologies,” says Ryan.

“A lot of people at the time saw virtual reality as simply useful in gaming, but I felt there was a real opportunity to merge it with our own technology.”

Ryan Aerospace, winner of the 2024 Queensland Premier’s Export Award in the Advanced Technologies category, is expecting that by the end of this year it will hit a total of 600 sales of its flight simulators to global markets since inception, most of these to military clients.

It’s a massive growth trajectory for Ryan, whose journey into the aerospace sector began with a dream to gain his helicopter pilot’s licence more than 20 years ago.

“I was already a fixed-wing pilot and began learning to fly since I was a kid but, in 2000, I decided to take my first helicopter lesson,” says Ryan.

“When I got back on the ground after that lesson, I was a bit disappointed with my performance, even though my instructor thought I did well.

“Then I learned it was going to take at least 5 to 10 lessons for me to get a grounding on the basics of helicopter piloting, and at the time I could only afford one lesson a year.”

That set Ryan on the path to building his own simulator – a rudimentary device that he explains did work well for him. As Ryan describes it, the device was “made with an office chair and a PVC pipe stuck to the side of it, with dodgy welding and wires hanging off it”.

“I knocked up that simulator in my garage in about 2001 and, when I went to my second lesson, I found I could take off and land the helicopter, fly sideways and even hover which is one of the hardest skills to master,” he says.

“My instructor told me he had never seen anyone pick up helicopter piloting as quickly as I did.”

This makeshift simulator was essentially the beginning of a multimillion-dollar business for the former council worker who is now at the forefront of virtual-reality technology for flight simulators globally.

Inspired by a suggestion from his helicopter flight trainer, Ryan made his first commercial-ready prototype which initially garnered the attention of the Royal Air Force in England.

“That gave me the confidence to really start building my business,” he says.

Since then, the relentless task of promoting Ryan Aerospace and its products to a tech-hungry market has seen Ryan attend almost 70 trade shows around the world, taking him overseas about 4 times a year meeting with some of the biggest buyers in the industry.

“The US has been interested in our products for many years and the trade shows have played a big part in this,” he says.

In 2018, Ryan spent a week at the Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida and the US Army post at Fort Novosel, leading to an initial order of 40 devices to be used for preliminary flight training.

“The testing was extremely successful, and they found the simulator trial group was doing 40 per cent less training than those using real helicopters, while also outperforming the group that did their training in a real helicopter,” says Ryan.

“They were able to train these students to fly their helicopters much more effectively and quicker than conventional means.”

In 2020, Ryan Aerospace secured a contract for 350 fixed-wing aircraft simulators for the US Air Force as part of a growing awareness in the military of the benefits that flight simulators offer in training pilots.

Research from data and analytics company Global Data released earlier this year revealed that the US is expected to significantly boost its military simulation and training expenditure to more than US$26 billion annually by 2028.?

The massive spend puts Ryan Aerospace, with its existing ties to the US military, in a strong position to capitalise on further growth.

It also highlights the growing depth and diversity of the Gold Coast economy with the city’s latest Economic Outlook report for 2024 revealing that sectors such as technology are beginning to catch up to legacy pillars such as tourism, manufacturing and construction as major contributors to the city’s economy.

Ryan Aerospace has a team of about 10 that undertakes all design work inhouse, while subcontracting most of the metal fabrication to local companies.

“Our simulators get assembled and quality-assurance tested at our Nerang factory, and then packaged and shipped for international markets,” says Ryan.

“We have gone from a one-man show to a team of about 10 people with the scale of the business making it nimble enough to adapt to the varying design needs of clients. We can move very quickly and customise without too much effort.

“Our system is also modular and reconfigurable which means that you can turn our simulators into almost any aircraft you want.”

Apart from the US military, Ryan Aerospace also supplies to military customers in the UK, Japan and Australia where it has provided simulators for Apache helicopters which are due to arrive next year.

“We hope that when the Apache comes into service here next year, we will be well placed to be able to support the Army with their pilot training,” says Ryan.

The company can even develop rear crew trainers aimed at assisting electronic manufacturing services providers with search-and-rescue and fire-fighting applications.

Ryan Aerospace’s products benefit from being much more compact than conventional simulators, while also providing more effective training at a lower cost.

“Simulators are obviously much cheaper than flying real aircraft and they’re much safer,” says Ryan.

“But traditional simulators can take up big factories whereas with ours you can fit 2 or 3 in an office.”

The Ryan Aerospace technology not only leverages virtual reality, but “mixed reality” technologies.

“That’s where you have a headset on with 3 cameras at the front of the headset which means that some of what you can see is real and some of what you can see is virtual,” says Ryan.

“For example, everything inside the cockpit is real so you can touch the controls and see your legs, but everything outside the cockpit is virtual which allows us to create a much smaller device that can provide similar training outcomes at a fraction of the cost.”

While Ryan Aerospace was first to market with its technology, Ryan says increased competition in the sector has led the company to innovate in order to stay ahead of the pack.

The company later this year will unveil its latest immersive training device in the US which Ryan says is “even more modular and reconfigurable” than other devices.

“We have been working really hard on the next-generation simulator; it can be virtually any aircraft you like.

“We have plenty of competition which is why we continue to innovate and increase our capabilities.”

The company has upgraded its existing facilities with a new laser cutter and 3D printer, providing Ryan Aerospace with greater control of its supply chain.

“Our product offering is changing but so are our internal capabilities. All of the avionics multifunction displays can now be done inhouse rather than bringing them in from the US.”

Improved efficiencies have set Ryan Aerospace’s sights on even bigger contracts, with the company founder noting that there is ample capacity to scale and meet demand.

“Since making the move to the Gold Coast, giving us access to materials suppliers, labour via the universities and proximity to international airports, our business is now well positioned to take on the larger projects that we are working towards at the moment,” says Ryan.

“The support we received from the City of Gold Coast from day one when we moved here and the ongoing support that we continue to receive to this day is helping us to drive this growth.

“We see ourselves firmly embedded here now, empowering pilots of the future around the world.”

As for his helicopter pilot’s licence, Ryan concedes he is still working on it after all these years.

“I did get to go solo about 8 years ago, but work got a bit too busy. Now I’m back flying once a week and hoping to achieve my ticket this year.”

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