Executive Team
Mike Poole
Chief Executive Officer
Mike is a Professional Engineer and pilot with considerable expertise in the field of flight data analysis. He chairs the Flight Recorder Working Group of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators and represented Canada as the national expert panel member to ICAO's Flight Recorder Panel. He started in the field of aircraft accident investigation in 1977 and has worked for more than 20 years with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. For the last 15 years of his career at TSB, he was the head of the flight recorder and performance Division and was responsible for the development of the world-renowned Flight Recorder Playback & Analysis lab. He was the Flight Recorder Group Chairman on all major accidents in Canada as well as several international accidents during his tenure as the Recorder Laboratory Head.
Mike and Bob started Flightscape in 2002 when they left TSB, commercializing the RAPS flight data replay and analysis system that gained international attention. CAE acquired Flightscape in August 2007 and Mike remained with CAE Flightscape until April of 2013, leaving CAE to start Plane Sciences. In a somewhat surprising move, CAE decided to give Mike back Flightscape in 2017 and Flightscape became part of Plane Sciences.
Plane Sciences has been collocated and collaborating with AIRINC since 2013 and in 2021 APS was formed and both AIRINC and Plane Sciences merged their operations under APS.
Mike's hands-on investigation experience, lead roles on international committees in flight data analysis and technical knowledge bring significant expertise and leadership to the APS Team.
Steve Roberts
Steve is a Professional Physicist with degrees in both physics and geophysics. Steve is CEO of Applied Informatics and Research Incorporated a firm specializing in Flight Operation Quality Assurance Software design, development, and implementation as well as the readout and application of Digital Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder information.
From 1988 Steve has participated in numerous aviation-related accident investigations, involving material-failure analyses and materials characterizations, computer-aided accident reconstructions, and sophisticated radar, flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder data analyses.
Steve has undertaken extensive work into the analysis of air traffic control radar data, and into the computerized integration of radar and flight data recorder data, cockpit voice recorder and air traffic control communications, and weather and terrain information.
He held various positions at The Flight Data Company and Teledyne including General Manager, Director of FDM Services, Integrated Product Team Lead, and Director of Engineering for Flight Data Monitoring (FDM) and Simulation. Today as CEO of Applied Informatics and Research Inc he specializes in Radar and Flight Data and Cockpit Voice Recorder Analysis, aircraft performance and the computer still graphic and animation productions as well as mathematical and statistical data analysis as applied to Accident and Preventive Investigation programs and procedures.
Bob Hoyle
Chief Research Officer
Bob is a Professional Engineer, with bachelor's and master's degrees in Electrical Engineering. He started working at the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) of Canada in 1986 as the software project authority for the Recovery, Analysis & Presentation System (RAPS) which is the expert system software that Flightscape's Insight software is based on.
For damaged magnetic tape Flight Recorders, Bob pioneered the unique software decoding techniques that provide investigators with capabilities well beyond that of the manufacturer's equipment. Bob also has considerable experience in extracting data from damaged solid-state recorders which can employ sophisticated data compression techniques.
At the TSB/C, Bob was responsible for the acoustic Cockpit Voice Recorder laboratory and gained considerable experience in digital audio, adaptive filters, spectral analysis and noise reduction techniques. Bob has worked on numerous accident investigations, both domestic and international, during his tenure at the TSB/C.
Bob is one of the co-founders of Flightscape, joining the company in 2002 as the Managing Partner of Applied Technologies. At Flightscape, Bob used the experience gained while at the TSB/C to build accident/mishap investigation laboratories for other civil and military authorities around the world. In 2007, CAE purchased Flightscape. Bob stayed on as the Director of Technology, continuing to provide leadership in technology/engineering and build investigation labs. In total, close to 50 authorities around the world are using accident investigation technologies that Bob helped establish for them.In May 2013, Bob became the Chief Technology Officer of Plane Sciences where he will provide technical / engineering guidance and use his considerable accident/mishap investigation domain expertise to build accident investigation labs and provide customers with expert training and support.
J.S. Theriault
Chief Technical Officer
With 30 years of experience in the aerospace industry, JS is the CTO of Applied Informatics and Research Inc.
Since 1990 JS has been involved in a broad variety of software development projects and services focusing on flight safety. These projects range from DSP firmware decoding waveforms from flight data recorders at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), to high-level statistical data analysis of FOQA for millions of flights at the Flight Data Company and Teledyne Controls.
He worked as a software architect for AIR ReVision, an interactive dynamic integration of video, audio and 3-dimensional dynamic reconstruction of pilot training sessions on full flight simulators.
His extensive knowledge of flight data systems combined with his 40 years of software development experience uniquely combine to make JS a strong solution-oriented team player.
Michael Krebs
VP Sales
Michael Krebs has over twenty years of engineering and operational experience in the field of Flight Safety, including Flight Data Analysis and Safety Standards.
During his service with the German Air Force, Michael inspected flying units to ensure safety standards were being met, analyzed flight data for accidents and incidents, and coordinated the development/installation of new flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders.
At CAE Flightscape, Michael was responsible for product support and technical requirements for the development of the Insight suite of software products, the world standard used by governments and military in the field of Accident Investigation, by airlines in the field of Flight Data Monitoring (FDM), Flight Data Analysis (FDA) and Flight Operational Quality Assurance (FOQA), and by airlines and the military, in the field of Evidence-Based Training.
Michael has an Electrical Engineering degree and holds a recreational private pilot's license.
Captain Bryon Mask
Director, FDM/FOQA
Bryon Mask graduated from Dalhousie University and his career included 20 years of service in the military, flying both rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft, retiring from the Air Reserves with the rank of Major and 26 years of service with Air Canada. He has accumulated 20,000 hours of flying time.
Bryon has spent time both as a line pilot and a supervisory pilot with Air Canada including the position of Manager of Flight Safety. He is an accredited accident investigator, having been seconded to the Canadian Aviation Safety Board Headquarters while with Air Canada and has been involved in flight data monitoring (FDM) for 20 years with the airline industry, and Applied Informatics & Research Inc. (AIRINC) in Ottawa where he currently holds the position as Director of FDM.
He volunteers at the Aviation Museum in Ottawa where 6 of the aircraft in the collection he has flown, including the Argus and Sea-King. An avid golfer he currently is a member of Camelot Golf club in Ottawa.
Simon Lie
Senior Technical Fellow
Simon retired from Boeing as a Senior Technical Fellow after a 32-year career, including 21 years as an accident investigator. His career at Boeing included flight-line engineering and troubleshooting as well as 21 years focusing on aircraft safety. During his years with Boeing, Simon was the company focal for hundreds of incident and accident investigations and provided on-site support for numerous major accident investigations as the Boeing company focal. He is well-known to many investigation agencies for his aircraft system knowledge and expertise in flight data recording systems and flight data analysis.
After his retirement from Boeing, Simon founded Annex 13 Research and has joined the APS/Plane Sciences team to provide flight data analysis and investigation support expertise.
Since 2015, Simon has been a member of the ICAO Accident Investigation Panel representing aircraft manufacturers. He is also active in ISASI supporting seminar technical committees.