Profile: Donald G Gray

Aviation

Biography: Aviation

Donald is head of Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP's aerospace group, which maintains Canada's largest aircraft finance practice. His experience includes serving as vice president and general counsel of an international charter airline, domestic regional airline and an international cargo carrier. Donald also acted as vice president of maintenance and engineering for the airline group and is an active aircraft owner and IFR-rated pilot. Donald's practice is primarily in the field of aircraft finance and aviation commercial and regulatory law. He acts as counsel to most of the world's largest aircraft lessors and manufacturers, and many aircraft lenders and domestic and international air carriers.

Donald is active with the Canadian Bar Association (national air and space section), International Bar Association (aeronautical law section), American Bar Association (section on business law/aircraft financing subcommittee, and forum on air and space law/aircraft finance contracts division) and Air Transport Association of Canada (legal affairs committee). Donald was invited by Transport Canada Aviation to join the Canadian Aviation Regulation Advisory Council.

Donald was a Canadian delegate to the Unidroit/ICAO sessions which enacted the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Aircraft in November 2001, and was a member of the drafting group for the 1999 Rome and Montreal and 2001 Cape Town sessions and chair of the insolvency group in Montreal. Donald has also served on the legal advisory panel of the Aviation Working Group (AWG), a group of the world's leading aircraft manufacturers and financiers, since the formation of the panel in 2000. Donald was elected chair of the AWG Legal Panel in 2006.

Since 1994, Donald has been chair of the Canadian Airline Investment Conference which has been held in Toronto each year. He is a contributing author to Aircraft Liens and Detention Rights and Aircraft Finance: Registration, Security and Enforcement, provides the Canada chapter for the Airfinance Annual and is a frequent writer and speaker internationally on the subject of aircraft and engine finance.

In the LEXPERT Canada Directories since 1997, and the American Lawyer Media Guide to Leading Lawyers in Canada since 1999, Donald has been listed with the leading Toronto practitioners most frequently or repeatedly recommended in the fields of asset/equipment finance and leasing and aviation regulation matters. In the 1998 Euromoney and 2004 Expert Guide surveys he was named as the most recommended of Canada's aviation lawyers and he has been listed in the Euromoney/Expert Guide to the World's Leading Aviation Lawyers since 1998. Cassels Brock is ranked number one in Ontario for aviation law in Best Lawyers in Canada 2008. In the Expert Guide to the World's Leading Lawyers - Best of the Best 2007, Donald was named as the top aviation expert in Canada and was the only Canadian named in the 'World's Top 25 Aviation Lawyers'.