First off I'll give the answers to the two questions I get asked every day: Yes, I grew up in England. And yes, my real name is English . . .
 

With that out the way, we can review my sordid past:

It is a vicious rumor that I somehow came upon this earth after the circus train derailed into the toxic waste dump. I actually 'grew up' in Rainham, Kent, attending Parkwood Junior School and Gillingham Technical High School in the late seventies/early eighties. What a cute kid. So what happened?

I read physics at the University of Warwick, England. Spent most of my time as a member and sometime manager of the Students' Union Technical Services Group, providing lighting, sound-systems, and general technical support for all university concerts, balls, and discos. We worked several hundred bands, from REM to a Simply Red album launch, from Gary Glitter and Divine to Motorhead and The Damned. I also moonlighted as a nightclub disc jockey—DJ Dave Dynamite!

I came to America when I was 20, a week after graduating. After a range of jobs—including exciting stints as a supermarket shelf stocker, music store assistant manager, and car dealer negotiator—I learnt to fly at the FlightSafety Academy, Florida.

My first flying job was as number two reserve pilot for the rock'n'roll air traffic patrol in Raleigh, North Carolina. I rose to chief pilot there, and then moved on to become chief flight instructor at Spitfire Aviation, where I instructed military and foreign students in various light aircraft.

After that I flew the BAe-3101 for Northwest Airlink for ten months, then moved up to American Eagle in 1994 where I flew the Shorts 360, SAAB 340, ATR-42/ -72 and the Embraer EMB-135/-140/-145. In 2003 I was fortunate enough to be hired at a (then) fast-growing (now major) airline, where I fly the A320 as a captain. It pays my bills at the gliderport.

In the past I have consulted for ICAO as a member of a study group revising international standards and recommended practices, but now I'm more interested in people than procedures. Some of my research has been published in a scientific journal:

English, D. & Branaghan, R. J. (2012).
An empirically derived taxonomy of pilot violation behavior. Safety Science, 50, 2, pp. 199-209.
doi: 10.1016/j.ssci.2011.08.009

Editor of a funny little book Slipping the Surly Bonds: Great Quotations on Flight, first published by McGraw-Hill in 1998, and The Air  Up There: More Great Quotations on Flight, in 2003. Also wrote a chapter of the book Silverbird: The American Airlines Story.

I live in Phoenix, Arizona. It's a dry heat. I'm married to the love of my life, Nancy, a beautiful Colombian. We have a wonderful son together. I am indeed a lucky man.

Some of my other interests:

Jogging, hiking, biking, cooking, baking, reading, swimming, surfing, soaring, 'blading, laughing, living, learning, loving, sharing, caring, doing, being.

Somehow slipped articles into magazines like Air Line Pilot, Airliners, Airways, Aviation Consumer, Flight Training, IFR, Professional Pilot, and Sky & Telescope.

I can be found on the Interwebs at:

Academia.edu
Amazon.com (as an author)
Amazon.com (as a reader)
App.net
Facebook
Flickr
Foodspotting
Foursquare
Fragile Oasis
Instagram
LinkedIn
Pheed
Quora
ResearchGate
Twitter
Xing
Yelp

Above the clouds, I'll see you in the sky . . .