Vertical Aerospace “Appoints Paul Stone to Strengthen Test Pilot Team”

UK-based eVTOL com­pa­ny, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, has appoint­ed Paul Stone to strength­en its Test Pilot team, reports a press release. His arrival makes Ver­ti­cal one of the few elec­tric air taxi devel­op­ers to have two test pilots with expe­ri­ence fly­ing full-scale, pilot­ed eVTOL air­craft. 

The release says, “With over 28 years of expe­ri­ence in exper­i­men­tal, devel­op­ment, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and pro­duc­tion test fly­ing, includ­ing 20 years in the Roy­al Navy, Paul has accu­mu­lat­ed over 4,800 flight hours across more than 200 air­craft types.” 

It con­tin­ues, “Most recent­ly he was Chief Test Pilot at Volo­copter, fly­ing both their con­cept demon­stra­tor and full-scale eVTOL Voloc­i­ty pro­to­type for the last 3 years.” He joins Vertical’s oth­er Test Pilots, Simon Davies and Tim Eldridge.   

Stone’s exper­tise includes over 15 years of test expe­ri­ence on all marks of Har­ri­er along with cut­ting-edge research on Short/Vertical Take-Off and Land­ing (SVTOL/VTOL) dig­i­tal flight con­trol sys­tems, con­tribut­ing to the Vec­tored-thrust Air­craft Advanced Con­trol (VAAC) Har­ri­er and the Boe­ing X‑32 Short Take-Off and Ver­ti­cal Land­ing (STOVL) con­cept demon­stra­tor. He has also worked on con­trol law devel­op­ment for NASA and Boe­ing, refin­ing the soft­ware that gov­erns air­craft sta­bil­i­ty and manoeu­vra­bil­i­ty.

Stu­art Simp­son, CEO at Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, com­ment­ed,  “A test team with two eVTOL expe­ri­enced pilots puts us in an elite group world­wide. I look for­ward to see­ing Paul take to the skies in our full-scale pro­to­type as we progress our pilot­ed test pro­gram.”

Stone also has exten­sive pri­vate defence sec­tor flight test expe­ri­ence, includ­ing at BAE Sys­tems where he served as Typhoon Future Capa­bil­i­ty Direc­tor, Direc­tor of Flight Oper­a­tions and Chief Test Pilot for Com­bat Air­craft, lead­ing crit­i­cal flight test pro­grams. 

Paul Stone, remarked, “I have been pas­sion­ate about test­ing cut­ting-edge air­craft through­out my career and Ver­ti­cal is at the lead­ing edge of elec­tric avi­a­tion. With the VX4’s progress and the team’s world-class exper­tise, I’m excit­ed to be part of the jour­ney to cer­ti­fy and com­mer­cialise this air­craft.” 

Ver­ti­cal has recent­ly com­plet­ed pilot­ed thrust borne test­ing for its VX4 pro­to­type and con­tin­ues to work with the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) to expand its flight enve­lope ahead of wing­borne flight, which it believes would be a world-first with this air­craft type.  

His appoint­ment fol­lows Vertical’s recent FY24 earn­ings announce­ment, which includ­ed news that the assem­bly of the third full-scale VX4 pro­to­type has begun at GKN Aerospace’s Glob­al Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre.  

For more infor­ma­tion

https://vertical-aerospace.com/

(Top image: Paul Stone — Cred­it: Ver­ti­cal Aero­space)

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