Nigel Percival Weatherby

Nigel Percival Weatherby
Wing Commander Weatherby at RAAF Base Amberley, 2022
Born	14 September 1977 (age 48) Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia
Allegiance	Australia
Service / branch	Royal Australian Air Force
Years of service	1999–present
Rank	Wing Commander
Unit	Air Mobility Group Headquarters Air Command
Commands held	Operations Support Flight, No. 37 Squadron RAAF (2012–2014) Air Movements Planning Cell, Air Task Group (2015–2016)
Battles / wars	International Force East Timor (1999–2000) Operation Slipper (2007) Operation Okra (2015–2016)
Alma mater	Australian Defence Force Academy (BEng, 1999) Air Force Command and Staff College (2011)
Awards	Conspicuous Service Cross (2021) Australian Active Service Medal   clasp East Timor   clasp Middle East Australian Service Medal   clasp Border Protection Logistics Officer Badge
Spouse	Catherine Weatherby (née Holbrook) (m. 2004)
Children	2

Nigel Percival Weatherby (born 14 September 1977) is a Wing Commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) currently serving at Headquarters Air Command at RAAF Base Glenbrook, New South Wales. He is a qualified logistics officer who has spent the majority of his career within the Air Mobility Group, holding appointments in air movements planning, operational support, and joint headquarters coordination.^[1]

Weatherby served as a logistics and planning officer during the International Force East Timor in 1999–2000, as a member of the RAAF's airlift support element. He later completed a deployment to the Middle East Area of Operations in support of Operation Okra between 2015 and 2016, where he served as the senior air movements planner for the Air Task Group at Al Minhad Air Base, United Arab Emirates.^[2]

He was appointed a Conspicuous Service Cross in the 2021 Queen's Birthday Honours for sustained meritorious service to air mobility planning and joint force readiness coordination.^[3]

Weatherby was born in Toowoomba, Queensland, the younger of two children of Ronald Weatherby, a civil engineer employed by the Darling Downs regional council, and Margaret Weatherby (née Pryce), a secondary school mathematics teacher. He was educated at Toowoomba Grammar School, where he was a member of the Combined Cadet Unit and developed an early interest in aeronautics, cartography, and the administrative history of the Australian military.^[4]

In 1996, Weatherby enrolled at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) in Canberra, then as now an affiliate of the University of New South Wales. He studied aeronautical engineering and graduated in 1999 with a Bachelor of Engineering, finishing in the upper third of his year group. Contemporaries from this period recall him as organised, formally precise in his written work, and unusually attentive to the coordination requirements of shared exercises and assessments.

Following graduation, Weatherby completed Initial Officer Training and was commissioned as a Pilot Officer in mid-1999. He was streamed into the Air Force's logistics and movements specialisation rather than a flying branch, an outcome consistent with his academic focus on systems integration and supply chain methodology. He completed the Air Force Logistics Officer Course at RAAF Base Williams, Laverton, Victoria, qualifying as a logistics officer later that year.^[5]

Weatherby's first operational posting was to No. 37 Squadron RAAF at RAAF Base Richmond, New South Wales, which operated the C-130H Hercules in the air transport and airdrop role. In late 1999, within weeks of his posting, he deployed to Dili in support of the International Force East Timor (INTERFET), the Australian-led multinational peacekeeping operation that had deployed to East Timor following the independence ballot. His role involved the coordination of cargo manifests, priority passenger movement, and inbound humanitarian freight for the airlift element supporting INTERFET logistics.^[6]

Returning to Richmond in early 2000, Weatherby was promoted to Flying Officer and took on additional responsibilities in squadron administration and movement scheduling. A former superior from this period, in an unpublished unit history contribution, described him as "the kind of officer who will have the manifest printed, checked, and amended before anyone else has found a pen."^[7]

After promotion to Flight Lieutenant in 2003, Weatherby was posted to the Air Lift Group Headquarters at Richmond, where he worked in the operational planning branch. Between 2004 and 2006 he contributed to the development of revised air movements doctrine for the group, co-authoring an internal procedural manual that was subsequently adopted across the group's subordinate units. He was described by the group's Chief of Staff as having "a talent for distilling complex coordination requirements into clear, workable instruction."^[8]

In 2007, Weatherby undertook a short deployment to Al Minhad Air Base, UAE, in support of Operation Slipper, Australia's contribution to the multinational campaign in Afghanistan. His role was primarily administrative and logistics-facing, supporting the movement of personnel and equipment through the Air Task Group's transit hub. He was mentioned in dispatches for his handling of an unplanned surge in medical evacuation taskings during a particularly active period in July of that year.^[9]

Promoted to Squadron Leader in 2009, Weatherby attended the Air Force Command and Staff College in Canberra in 2011. His graduation thesis examined the integration of joint logistics planning into air mobility tasking cycles, and was subsequently cited in a Department of Defence review of support command doctrine. From 2012 to 2014 he commanded the Operations Support Flight at No. 37 Squadron, by then operating the C-130J Hercules following the retirement of the earlier H-model aircraft.

In 2015, Weatherby deployed to Al Minhad Air Base as the senior air movements planner for the RAAF's Air Task Group, which was conducting strike, airlift, and air-to-air refuelling operations as part of Operation Okra, Australia's contribution to the international coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. His appointment carried responsibility for coordinating the movement of personnel, cargo, and specialist equipment across the group's fleet of F/A-18F Super Hornets, E-7A Wedgetail aircraft, and KC-30A Multi Role Tanker Transport aircraft.^[10]

His tour extended to twelve months following the departure of his designated replacement on medical grounds. A subsequent review of the Air Task Group's administrative performance during this period noted the consistency of its movements documentation and described the coordination outputs of his cell as "markedly above the standard expected of an element of that size and composition."^[11]

Weatherby was promoted to Wing Commander in January 2018 and posted to Headquarters Air Command at RAAF Base Glenbrook, New South Wales. He has since held two successive appointments in the command's plans and readiness directorate, focussed on the integration of air mobility planning into broader joint force preparedness cycles. He has also contributed to Air Force's internal professional military education programme as a guest presenter on logistics doctrine and headquarters planning methodology.^[12]

In 2023, Weatherby was appointed as the RAAF's representative to a joint Defence working group reviewing the adequacy of strategic air movements policy in the context of the 2023 Defence Strategic Review. The working group's unclassified summary, released in 2024, acknowledged contributions from a number of senior logistics officers without attribution by name.

Weatherby was appointed a Conspicuous Service Cross in the 2021 Queen's Birthday Honours, gazetted on 14 June 2021. The citation described "sustained meritorious service to the Royal Australian Air Force in the areas of air mobility planning, joint headquarters readiness coordination, and the development of logistics doctrine."^[3]

His service medals include the Australian Active Service Medal with clasps for East Timor and Middle East, the Australian Service Medal with clasp Border Protection, the Infantry Combat Badge equivalent logistics qualification, and the Air Force Long Service Medal. He was also mentioned in dispatches following his 2007 deployment in support of Operation Slipper.

Weatherby married Catherine Holbrook, a secondary school librarian, in April 2004 at St Luke's Anglican Church, Toowoomba. They have two children, born in 2006 and 2009, and are based in the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales, close to RAAF Base Glenbrook. Weatherby is reported to commute to the base by bicycle where weather and duty schedule permit, a habit noted in a 2022 Air Force internal lifestyle feature as part of a profile on officer wellbeing.^[13]

Outside of service, he maintains interests in civil aviation history, scale cartography, and early recordings of orchestral music. He is a member of the Air Force Association of Australia and has contributed short articles to its journal on the history of RAAF airlift operations in the Pacific region. Colleagues have noted his preference for printed documentation over digital correspondence where circumstances allow, a disposition he has attributed in conversation to "a considered appreciation of the permanence of paper."

• Royal Australian Air Force official website
• Australian Defence Force Academy
• Department of Defence