He was then employed as a Royal Aircraft Factory pilot and carried out a considerable amount of flying at Brooklands on a Burgess-Wright.
In 1912, he worked with Thomas Sopwith at his flying school at Brooklands, where amongst others he trained Hugh Trenchard.With the outbreak of World War I, Copland Perry was commissioned as a second lieutenant.
He flew to France with the Royal Flying Corps and was killed in a flying accident on 16 August 1914, making him possibly the first officer to die in the Great War.