Adjunct Professor
3690 Peel Street
Montreal, Quebec
Canada H3A 1W9
donal.hanley [at] mcgill.ca (Email)
Biography
Ambassador Donal Patrick Hanley, FRAeS is an Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Law, having previously served as the Interim Director, and subsequently as Associate Director, of the Institute of Air and Space Law, as well as Associate Professor (Professional). He is also a member of the editorial board for the McGill Annals of Air and Space Law.
Among other publications, he is the author of the book “Aircraft Operating Leasing: A Theoretical and Practical Analysis in the Context of Public and Private International Air Law”, now in preparation for its 4th edition, and also edited the third edition of the two volume textbook of the International Air Transport Association "International Aircraft Financing", originally written by the late Professor Donald H Bunker.
Ambassador Hanley is a non-practising Solicitor in England and Wales, a Solicitor in Ireland, an Attorney-at-Law in California, and a Foreign Legal Affairs Attorney in the Republic of China, Taiwan. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and is currently a Visiting Associate Professor at National Yang Chiao Tung University in Taiwan.
His research primarily focuses on aviation finance law as a subset of aviation rather than of finance law as well as on public international law, especially regarding diplomatic law and sovereignty.
Prior to entering academia, Professor Hanley worked as a lawyer for law firms in Ireland, England and Japan as well as for aircraft leasing companies in California, Ireland and Egypt. Together with the late Professor Bunker and others, he founded a joint venture aircraft leasing company in Egypt shortly before the 2011 revolution there and served on its board of directors, helping to guide it successfully during that challenging period. He has also served as a director on the boards of several aircraft leasing companies in Ireland, France and Sweden, and served as founding Managing Director of ACG Aircraft Leasing Ireland Limited, subsidiary of a large American aircraft leasing company.
He holds an MA degree from Trinity College Dublin, an MBA degree in International Aviation from John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, and LLM and PhD degrees in Air and Space Law from Leiden University and is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. He speaks English, Gaelic, French, Japanese and some German, Chinese and Latin.
Ambassador Hanley is a Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and is its Ambassador accredited to the Republic of the Marshall Islands as well as having served as its Observer to the 42nd Assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montréal in 2025. He is also a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.
