After just over two years leading the nation’s top United States commercial and defense aerospace lobbying association, David Melcher said on Thursday he is departing the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) at the end of 2017 to pursue other interests.
Melcher, 63, joined AIA as president and CEO in June 2015 after he led the former defense company Exelis from 2011 until its acquisition by Harris Corp. [HRS] in May 2015. He spent 32 years in the Army before retiring as at Lt. General, then joined ITT Corp. [ITT] as an strategy and business development executive, eventually becoming president of the company’s defense business before it was spun off and renamed Exelis.
A spokesman for AIA told Defense Daily that “As of right now,” Melcher’s “other interests include spending more time with his growing family, traveling with his wife Marla, and continued participation on corporate boards.”
AIA said its Executive Committee, which is chaired by Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing’s [BA] chairman, president and CEO, has begun a search for the association’s next CEO. Melcher will continue to lead AIA until his resignation goes into effect and will help in selecting and onboarding his successor.
Muilenburg in a statement thanked Melcher for his leadership of AIA and industry representation, saying “he increased AIA’s worldwide brand recognition with a new administration, congress and our global counterparts. Thanks to Dave and his team’s efforts, AIA is well positioned for continued growth and influence in the future.”
AIA advocates for the interests of its more than 300 aerospace and defense manufacturers and suppliers. The association also annually reviews the state of the aerospace and defense industry every December, publishing facts and figures such as sales, operating profit, orders, exports and imports, and the workforce, as well as a revenue forecast for the coming year.
Under Melcher, however, AIA stopped providing a revenue forecast for the coming year and preliminary estimates for current year sales. Instead, in its December presentations the past two years, AIA provided sales and statistics for the first nine months of the year.
Last December, Melcher said during the association’s annual year-end luncheon that barriers remain to trade in the areas of defense and unmanned aircraft. He also called on the then-incoming Trump administration to include NASA’s facilities as part of plans to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure.
So far, President Donald Trump’s plans for investing in U.S. infrastructure have been sidelined by a long-winded effort to pass healthcare bills in the House and Senate and the relentless reporting and investigating around the president’s aides, advisers and family members’ contacts with Russian officials and agents during last year’s presidential election campaign.
Melcher’s predecessor at AIA, Marion Blakey, left the organization in early 2015 to become head of the North American business of Britain’s Rolls-Royce.