Jonathan Aleck is head of Legal, International and Regulatory Affairs at the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA).

Dr Aleck joined what was then the Civil Aviation Authority in 1993 as a Legal Officer, assuming the role of CASA’s Senior Legal Counsel in 1995 and Chief Legal Officer in 1996. During his tenure at CASA, he has held a number of senior executive positions in the legal, operational and policy fields.

For more than 25 years, Dr Aleck has written and spoken publicly on various aspects of regulatory theory and practice in the modern aviation-related environment. Much of his professional and analytical work focuses on managing the critical balance between the complementary safety-related objectives of aviation regulatory authorities and accident investigation agencies, and the development of rational parameters for the reporting, use and protection of safety-related information. He chaired ICAO’s Safety Information Protection Task Force and currently chairs the Safety Information Protection Implementation Group. He also serves as vice chair of the ICAO Task Force on Article 12 (Rules of the Air) of the Chicago Convention and as a member of the ICAO Study Group on Legal Issues Related to Pilotless Aircraft.

From September 1998 to August 2003, Dr Aleck was Australia’s representative on the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). He has represented Australia at a number of international aviation meetings and conferences, including most recently the 2^nd ICAO Civil Aviation Legal Advisers Forum (20 to 23 February 2023) and the 41^st Session of the ICAO Assembly (27 September to 7 October 2022), where he was elected by the Assembly as Chair of the Legal Commission.  He also represented Australia at the 38^th Session of the ICAO Legal Committee in March 2022, and at the ICAO High-Level Conference on COVID-19 in October 2021.

Before and since arriving in Australia in 1988, Dr Aleck has combined a professional and academic career as a lawyer, a legal policy consultant and a university lecturer. He has taught law and politics at the Australian National University (in both the Faculty of Law and the Public Policy Program), the University of Canberra, the University of Hawaii and the University of Oregon in the United States, and the University of Papua New Guinea. He continues to lecture occasionally at the Australian National University, the University of New South Wales and the Australian Defence Force Academy. While serving on the ICAO Council Dr Aleck was a visiting lecturer in the Institute of Air and Space Law at McGill University in Montréal.

Dr Aleck is a member of the Australian Institute of Administrative Law, having served two terms as president of the Institute.  He is vice chair of the Flight Safety Foundation’s Legal Advisory Committee and a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

Dr Aleck earned his law degree (juris doctor) at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.  He holds a bachelor of arts degree in psychology and a master of arts degree in political science from the University of Oregon, and a doctor of philosophy in law from the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University.