Meet Our Team

Mr. Fernando Val Martinez has started his career journey with the Military in Spanish Air Force both as a pilot and in management positions, where he shaped some of core values mainly respect, honesty, hardwork and teamwork. Later on, he joined the aviation industry as part of the startup team of an airline called Vueling. After 12 years, Vueling became a leading airline in the competitive European low cost market growing profitable from 0 to more than 120 airplanes. During these years, he had different positions in Operations, Quality and Safety, becoming eventually COO. The last few years he has lived here in the United Arab Emirates, as Group COO of Air Arabia leading the transformation plan to ensure a solid growth and increase in profitability. He has done his postgraduate studies at Harvard, IESE, Airbus and USAF. He has played a significant role in Organizational improvements in every role he played ensuring cost efficiencies and risk management as a key focus.

An illustrious career spanning 25 years and demonstrating impressive growth and development, Mr. Faisal Al Marzouqi is now our honored Chief Operations Officer (COO). A proud Emirati national, Faisal has committed more than half of his professional career to the UAE government and has more than 23 years’ experience within Air Traffic Services, the last 8 years within Senior Manager ATC and Manager Air Traffic Services. Following his time serving in the UAE government service, Faisal joined GAL ANS in 2011 as Manager Air Traffic Services for GAL ANS and from there continued to grow and develop to his current role as COO. Faisal was originally trained as an Air Traffic Controller and holds most of his credentials from ATC background. Keen to share the technical and managerial capabilities he has amassed from both civil and government sectors, Faisal prioritizes all support initiatives directed towards the mentoring of Emirati youth.

Prior to joining GAL ANS in 2017, David had a successful and varied 23 year career with NATS and Helios (the aviation consultancy of Egis). He has recently been promoted to the role of Chief Commercial Officer of GAL ANS, prior to that, he was Director of Civil Air Navigation Services and before that, he was Director of Strategy and Business Development. David has extensive experience across all Air Traffic Management (ATM) disciplines, having worked with several Air Navigation Service Providers, National Supervisory Authorities, Institutions and ATM system suppliers in Europe, Middle East and Far East. With wide-ranging international experience in Air Traffic operations, delivery of change, sales and marketing, he has led multi-disciplinary, culturally diverse teams to deliver large scale, complex and safety critical programmes and business initiatives into many airports and area control centers for customers across the globe. David has managed budgets in excess of $65m and has delivered operational cost savings greater than $100m. David holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Electrical Engineering from Kings College in London.