Overair names Tom Whayne as chief financial officer

Overair has appoint­ed Tom Whayne as chief finan­cial offi­cer to over­see all finan­cial oper­a­tions and pro­vide strate­gic guid­ance to the com­pa­ny as it con­tin­ues its path toward com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion.

Whayne was pre­vi­ous­ly chief finan­cial offi­cer of OneWeb, where he led the rais­ing of more than $3 bil­lion of cap­i­tal to fund the com­pa­ny’s devel­op­ment of a glob­al broad­band com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­stel­la­tion in low earth orbit. Most recent­ly, he was senior vice pres­i­dent and chief strat­e­gy offi­cer of Maxar Tech­nolo­gies, an earth intel­li­gence and space infra­struc­ture com­pa­ny.

“We are immense­ly proud to wel­come Tom to the team,” said Ben Tign­er, co-founder and CEO of Overair. “His finance and oper­at­ing back­ground in orbital plat­form com­pa­nies posi­tions him per­fect­ly to help Overair pre­pare for rapid scal­ing. Tom’s appoint­ment comes at a piv­otal time in our com­pa­ny as we build our full-scale But­ter­fly pro­to­type.”

Whayne added: “I am thrilled to join such an illus­tri­ous team with such a sto­ried her­itage. Overair’s com­mit­ment to rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing trans­porta­tion and cre­at­ing sus­tain­able solu­tions for urban mobil­i­ty is tru­ly inspir­ing. It is an excit­ing time to be part of the advanced air mobil­i­ty move­ment.”

In addi­tion to Whayne’s tenure at OneWeb and Maxar, he brings over 20 years of expe­ri­ence as an invest­ment banker. Whayne was a man­ag­ing direc­tor at Cred­it Suisse First Boston, Mor­gan Stan­ley, and Roth­schild. He has a bachelor’s degree in eco­nom­ics from Har­vard Col­lege and a JD degree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia School of Law.

Adding Whayne to the team solid­i­fies the strength of Overair’s C‑suite and con­tin­ues its strong momen­tum. The com­pa­ny has made sig­nif­i­cant progress in the devel­op­ment of its But­ter­fly air­craft, with full-scale propul­sion test­ing com­plet­ed in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2022 and cur­rent exe­cu­tion of its full-scale pro­to­type pro­gram in 2023.

But­ter­fly will be the qui­etest, most robust and largest-capac­i­ty pro­duc­tion-eVTOL vehi­cle, with seat­ing for five pas­sen­gers and a pilot plus a sep­a­rate large car­go com­part­ment.

Overair is spun out of Karem Air­craft in 2020, the San­ta Ana, Cal­i­for­nia-based com­pa­ny that announced the design of its vehi­cle, But­ter­fly, in 2021. But­ter­fly­’s pro­pri­etary tech­nolo­gies, derived from the Overair team’s decades of aero­space expe­ri­ence, cre­ate crit­i­cal pow­er reserves using today’s com­mer­cial­ly avail­able bat­tery cells, which trans­late into advances in safe­ty and a supe­ri­or expe­ri­ence for rid­ers and com­mu­ni­ties.

Overair has oper­at­ing part­ner­ships with com­pa­nies such as Han­wha Sys­tems and Bris­tow Group, and the team com­plet­ed its full-scale propul­sion test­ing in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2022.

In August 2022, Overair announced that Dr Valerie Man­ning would join the com­pa­ny as chief com­mer­cial offi­cer from her role as senior vice pres­i­dent of train­ing and flight oper­a­tion ser­vices at Air­bus.

Overair Wel­comes Air­bus Exec­u­tive Dr Valerie Man­ning as CCO