Vertical Flight Society enjoyed record membership growth in 2022 thanks to progress of eVTOL aircraft market

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety has con­tin­ued to expand its mem­ber­ship with 183 com­pa­nies now mem­bers of as Jan­u­ary 1st, 2023 — rep­re­sent­ing a net growth 12 per cent com­pared to the same time last year.

There are near­ly 6,400 indi­vid­ual mem­bers — a net increase of near­ly 6% (350 indi­vid­u­als) since before the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and a 30% growth (1,400 indi­vid­u­als) over the past six years. Much of this growth is due to the VFS’ efforts and resources pro­vid­ed to the ver­ti­cal flight indus­try, includ­ing tech­ni­cal resources, tal­ent acqui­si­tion, pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment, edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties and net­work­ing.

Mike Hirschberg, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor at the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety, said: “This past year saw impres­sive progress towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of eVTOL air­craft in the US, Europe and Asia. VFS has been instru­men­tal in bring­ing the com­mu­ni­ty togeth­er and devel­op­ing broad sup­port for eVTOL devel­op­ments over the past decade. We are very proud of the progress shown by our cor­po­rate mem­bers, as well as our mem­bers in acad­e­mia and gov­ern­ment agen­cies around the world.”

A total of 46 new com­pa­nies joined VFS dur­ing 2022. Descrip­tions of each com­pa­ny, includ­ing links to their web­sites, .

These new cor­po­rate mem­bers include com­pa­nies and asso­ci­a­tions from around the world which are sup­port­ing all aspects of ver­ti­cal flight. In addi­tion to civ­il and mil­i­tary rotor­craft devel­op­ments, such as the US Army’s Future Ver­ti­cal Lift (FVL) pro­gram, eVTOL devel­op­ments increased marked­ly in 2022.

Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety is mak­ing final plans for the upcom­ing — which will be held in-per­son and vir­tu­al­ly from Jan­u­ary 24th –26th in Mesa, Ari­zona. The event is in con­junc­tion with the Society’s 10th Bien­ni­al Autonomous VTOL Tech­ni­cal Meet­ing — the world’s largest and longest-run­ning event focus­ing on the incred­i­ble promise, progress and chal­lenges of eVTOL air­craft.

The event fea­tures a day of ple­nary ses­sions with 16 lead­ers from indus­try and gov­ern­ment address­ing both elec­tric and autonomous VTOL air­craft. Open­ing gov­ern­ment speak­ers rep­re­sent the US Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA), Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion (NASA), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), US Army and US Navy, with indus­try lead­ers from Air­bus, Boe­ing, Archer, Joby, Lil­i­um, Near Earth Auton­o­my, Overair, Tex­tron and Wisk.

An addi­tion­al 50 VIP speak­ers and pan­elists in the sym­po­sium cov­er impor­tant top­ics regard­ing eVTOL devel­op­ments, while some 30 tech­ni­cal papers and pre­sen­ta­tions on auton­o­my, drones, Mars heli­copters, eVTOL and advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) will be pre­sent­ed.

VFS has been the world’s largest tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ty of engi­neers, tech­nol­o­gists and spe­cial­ists devel­op­ing ver­ti­cal flight air­craft for 80 years. A grow­ing num­ber of pro­fes­sion­als are enter­ing the ver­ti­cal flight indus­try and VFS pro­vides them with numer­ous oppor­tu­ni­ties to increase their knowl­edge and exchange ideas.

As of today, the Soci­ety has cat­a­logued more than 760 dif­fer­ent elec­tric VTOL con­cepts from more than 350 com­pa­nies and inno­va­tors on its author­i­ta­tive World eVTOL Air­craft Direc­to­ry at www.evtol.news.

VFS was found­ed as the Amer­i­can Heli­copter Soci­ety in 1943 by the vision­ar­ies of the ear­ly heli­copter indus­try, who believed that tech­no­log­i­cal coop­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion were essen­tial to sup­port this new type of air­craft. Today, his­to­ry is repeat­ing itself, with VFS play­ing a sim­i­lar role help­ing to advance today’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary eVTOL air­craft.