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Horizon Aircraft Announces Board of Directors for Post-Merger Public Company

Hori­zon Air­craft who recent­ly announced it would be merg­ing with pub­licly-trad­ed spe­cial pur­pose acqui­si­tion com­pa­ny (SPAC), Pono Cap­i­tal Three, has now dis­closed its Board of Direc­tors, reports a press release. The post-merg­er Board will be led by Bran­don Robin­son, Founder and CEO of Hori­zon, and is formed of five direc­tors who hold exten­sive expe­ri­ence and exper­tise.

The com­po­si­tion of the Hori­zon Air­craft Board of Direc­tors are:-

Jason O’Neill: With more than 20 years of senior lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence, he has man­aged mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar projects across health­care, finance, and smart cities, and has nav­i­gat­ed enter­prise strat­e­gy vital to the high­ly reg­u­lat­ed aero­space indus­try.

Trisha Nomu­ra: Cur­rent­ly serv­ing as an inde­pen­dent direc­tor of Pono and Chair of its Audit Com­mit­tee, her role will con­tin­ue for the new­ly merged com­pa­ny.

John Maris, Ph.D: Will con­tin­ue serv­ing as an inde­pen­dent direc­tor of the merged Hori­zon Air­craft. Since 2008, Dr. Maris has held the role of CEO of Advanced Aero­space Solu­tions, act­ing as the prin­ci­pal flight-test inves­ti­ga­tor and test pilot for NASA’s Traf­fic Aware Strate­gic Air­crew Request tech­nol­o­gy. He is a vet­er­an of the Roy­al Cana­di­an Air Force and grad­u­at­ed from the USAF Pilot Course at Edwards Air Force Base in Cal­i­for­nia. Dr. Maris received his Ph.D. from Embry Rid­dle Aero­nau­ti­cal Uni­ver­si­ty, earn­ing his doc­tor­ate in Avi­a­tion Safe­ty and Human Fac­tors.

John Pin­sent: Will also con­tin­ue serv­ing as an inde­pen­dent direc­tor of the merged Hori­zon Air­craft. In 2004, he found­ed St. Arnaud Pin­sent Ste­man Char­tered Pro­fes­sion­al Accoun­tants, a char­tered pro­fes­sion­al account­ing firm based in Alber­ta, Cana­da. Pin­sent also serves as a board mem­ber of Enter­prise Group, a Toron­to Stock Exchange pub­lic com­pa­ny that pro­vides spe­cialised equip­ment and ser­vices in the build out of infra­struc­ture for ener­gy, pipeline, and con­struc­tion indus­tries.

Bran­don Robin­son

Bran­don Robin­son (Chair­man): Pri­or to the launch of Hori­zon Air­craft, Bran­don flew CF-18s in the Roy­al Cana­di­an Air Force for near­ly 20 years and had the dis­tinc­tion of grad­u­at­ing from the Cana­di­an Top Gun train­ing school. He was also entrust­ed with man­ag­ing major cap­i­tal projects totalling over UYSD4 bil­lion and was involved in the acqui­si­tion of the F‑35 and helped design the strate­gic plan to extend the func­tion­al life of the CF-18. Robin­son has a Bach­e­lor of Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Roy­al Mil­i­tary Col­lege, an MBA from Roy­al Roads Uni­ver­si­ty, has co-authored sev­er­al suc­cess­ful aero­space patents, and holds an Air­line Trans­port Pilots License.

He com­ment­ed, “We have attract­ed both expe­ri­enced pub­lic and pri­vate com­pa­ny exec­u­tives to help shape the tra­jec­to­ry of Hori­zon Air­craft. Each mem­ber brings dis­tinct oper­at­ing skills to assist us as we move into 2024.”

The busi­ness merg­er should occur in Jan­u­ary and Hori­zon will then begin trad­ing on the NASDAQ as a pub­lic com­pa­ny. There has not been an e/VTOL SPAC for some peri­od of time. Pre­vi­ous exam­ples include Lil­i­um, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, Archer and Joby. This form of busi­ness merg­er remains con­tro­ver­sial and is deemed risky for pub­lic share­hold­ers, as their invest­ment does not gen­er­al­ly fair well over the medi­um term.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.horizonaircraft.com

(Top image: con­cept of Cavorite X5)

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