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Former Volocopter CTO Arnaud Coville joins Japan’s SkyDrive as Chief Development Officer

Japan­ese eVTOL air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er Sky­Drive has appoint­ed Volo­copter’s for­mer CTO Arnaud Cov­ille as its new Chief Devel­op­ment Offi­cer, who will lead the team devel­op­ing the com­pa­ny’s SD-05 mod­el.

Sky­Drive CTO Nobuo Kishi will focus more on the type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process and both will work close­ly togeth­er and aim for enter­ing the air­craft into ser­vice in 2025. The SD-05’s design was unveil­ing back in Sep­tem­ber 2022 and the com­pa­ny reached a key mile­stone when the Japan Civ­il Avi­a­tion Bureau accept­ed its appli­ca­tion for the air­craft’s type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in Octo­ber, 2021. Sky­Drive intends to use the SD-05 as a com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger air­craft in the Osa­ka Bay area, begin­ning in 2025.

Cov­ille said: “I am proud to join Sky­Drive as the com­pa­ny has big poten­tial to play a lead­ing role in the indus­try. I believe that my inter­na­tion­al exper­tise will con­tribute to grow­ing its engi­neer­ing team and accel­er­at­ing the devel­op­ment of eVTOL air­craft. I look for­ward to work­ing with all the Sky­Drive teams to ensure that our first com­mer­cial mod­el fly­ing car, the SD-05, is a mar­ket suc­cess.”

Arnaud Cov­ille holds a Ph.D. in auto­mat­ic con­trol and robot­ics, and has three decades of expe­ri­ence in the air­craft indus­try. At Air­bus, he has been in var­i­ous man­age­ment posi­tions respon­si­ble for the devel­op­ment of vehi­cles, sys­tems and struc­tures in pro­grams of heli­copters and large air­crafts.

At Volo­copter, he has been respon­si­ble for orga­niz­ing and grow­ing the engi­neer­ing orga­ni­za­tion and lead­ing devel­op­ment projects as CTO. He will fur­ther accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of the SD-05 by lever­ag­ing his expe­ri­ences in air­craft devel­op­ment at Air­bus and lead­ing eVTOL devel­op­ment at Volo­copter.

Tomo­hi­ro Fukuza­wa, CEO of Sky­Drive Inc, said: “We are thrilled to have Arnaud Cov­ille as our CDO. He has gained remark­able man­age­ment skills over the course of his career at major enter­pris­es as well as a start­up. I firm­ly believe that his exten­sive expe­ri­ences not only in con­ven­tion­al air­craft devel­op­ment but also in a new type of air mobil­i­ty will be invalu­able to us as we seek to take the lead in the once-in-a-cen­tu­ry mobil­i­ty rev­o­lu­tion from Japan.”

In Japan, a type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is issued by the coun­try’s Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture and Tourism (MLIT) in accor­dance with Japan’s Civ­il Aero­nau­tics Law. This is to cer­ti­fy the design, struc­ture, strength, and per­for­mance of a new­ly devel­oped air­craft con­form with nec­es­sary safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal require­ments for the giv­en type of air­craft. Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is grant­ed only after the air­craft com­pletes a bat­tery of stud­ies and tests, includ­ing strength and flight tests.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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