Airbus and DGA test leaders to speak at Aerospace Test & Development Show 2026

Three senior European aerospace test practitioners have been confirmed as speakers at the Aerospace Test & Development Show 2026, which takes place September 29-30 at MEETT in Toulouse. Thierry Raffy, vice president of test and analytics engineering at Airbus, will open the Testing Forum with a presentation on future testing perspectives. He oversees 600 engineers at the Flight and Integration Tests Center and manages system ground and flight testing across all Airbus commercial programs. His talk will address pressures on testing: competition, speed to market, safety expectations, product complexity, and technology insertion. He will examine which of these represent opportunities.

Jean-Philippe Navarro, an Airbus expert in advanced modeling and technical leader of the company's hybrid testing project, will also speak. He holds a PhD in applied mathematics and has 25 years of experience defining and validating sizing methods for airframe structures at Dassault Aviation and Airbus. His work spans the Falcon 7X, A380, A400M, and A350 programs, with tests specified from coupons to full airframes. Navarro's presentation will cover how Airbus plans to strengthen the link between physical testing and numerical models by integrating data analytics, artificial intelligence, and probabilistic approaches.