Vertical Flight Society continues its record membership growth, with a 15 per cent net increase from 12 months ago

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS) has con­tin­ued to expe­ri­ence record growth this quar­ter, and 173 com­pa­nies are now mem­bers of VFS as of April 1, 2022, a net growth of 23 organ­i­sa­tions (15%) from a year ago and a dou­bling over the past five years. 

In addi­tion, VFS has announced that Joby Avi­a­tion, which was the first elec­tric ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing (eVTOL) air­craft com­pa­ny to join in April 2016, has increased its mem­ber­ship lev­el from Small Busi­ness Mem­ber to a Gold Mem­ber, the same lev­el as GE Avi­a­tion. 

The Gold Mem­ber­ship Class is sec­ond only to that of the five major heli­copter man­u­fac­tur­ers — Air­bus, Bell, Boe­ing, Leonar­do and Siko­rsky — which are Plat­inum Mem­bers.

Part­ly due to Joby’s ear­ly lead­er­ship and sup­port, VFS was able to expand its mis­sion over the past sev­er­al years from con­ven­tion­al heli­copters and advanced rotor­craft to elec­tric flight air­craft. 

VFS recent­ly expand­ed its sup­port to all elec­tric air­planes that use Part 23/CS-23 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards, for fixed-wing elec­tric-pow­ered con­ven­tion­al take­off and land­ing (eCTOL) and short take­off and land­ing (eSTOL) air­craft.

“All seg­ments of AAM are now intro­duc­ing tech­nolo­gies pio­neered by eVTOL air­craft devel­op­ers,” said Mike Hirschberg, VFS Exec­u­tive Direc­tor. 

“For exam­ple, cross pol­li­na­tion is espe­cial­ly impor­tant when it comes to cer­ti­fy­ing these advanced air­craft and devel­op­ing new infra­struc­ture that can be shared by more than one type of air­craft.”

On March 29–31, 2022, VFS held the first H2-Aero Sym­po­sium & Work­shop con­fer­ence in North Amer­i­ca on hydro­gen for avi­a­tion, which cov­ered appli­ca­tions from auto­mo­tive and space vehi­cles, to eVTOL, eSTOL and eCTOL air­craft.

It fea­tured three dozen speak­ers, with 100 in-per­son atten­dees and anoth­er 36 online. VFS now has two work­ing groups on the appli­ca­tion of hydro­gen fuel cell tech­nol­o­gy for elec­tric air­planes, heli­copters and eVTOL air­craft, and the nec­es­sary infra­struc­ture require­ments.

This event fol­lowed close­ly on the Society’s 9th Annu­al Elec­tric VTOL Sym­po­sium in Jan­u­ary 2022 with more than 600 atten­dees par­tic­i­pat­ing, the world’s largest and longest-run­ning con­fer­ence focus­ing on the progress and chal­lenges of eVTOL air­craft.

The week­end pri­or to the EAA Air­Ven­ture air­show, VFS will host the 16th annu­al Elec­tric Air­craft Sym­po­sium in Oshkosh, Wis­con­sin, on July 23–24, the world’s longest-run­ning con­fer­ence cov­er­ing all aspects of elec­tric flight. 

Last month, VFS announced the indi­vid­ual recip­i­ents of its 2022 Awards pro­gramme, which pays trib­ute to the out­stand­ing lead­ers of ver­ti­cal flight and has served as a cat­a­lyst for stim­u­lat­ing tech­no­log­i­cal advances.