“Wisk Appoints Sebastien Vigneron as New CEO, Brian Yutko Moves to Boeing”

U.S‑based Wisk Aero, a lead­ing autonomous eVTOL devel­op­er and whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of Boe­ing, announced this week the appoint­ment of Sebastien Vigneron as its new CEO, reports a press release.

He pre­vi­ous­ly served as Wisk’s Senior VP of Engi­neer­ing and Pro­grams, and will suc­ceed Bri­an Yutko, who is tran­si­tion­ing to a lead­er­ship role with­in Boeing’s Com­mer­cial Air­planes Divi­sion (BCA). 

Vigneron had led the Prod­uct Devel­op­ment of the Wisk’s Gen­er­a­tion 6 air­craft, includ­ing the Auton­o­my and Air­space Inte­gra­tion tech­nolo­gies. He also over­saw the Hard­ware & Soft­ware Engi­neer­ing, Sim­u­la­tion, Sys­tems Test, Flight Test and Pro­gram Man­age­ment teams. 

His appoint­ment comes at a sig­nif­i­cant time for Wisk, as the com­pa­ny pre­pares to fly its Gen 6 air­craft and progress on its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion path. His back­ground and inti­mate knowl­edge of new air­craft devel­op­ment is key to accel­er­at­ing Wisk’s path towards com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion.

He brings over 20 years of air­craft devel­op­ment expe­ri­ence to his role as CEO. Before join­ing Wisk in 2021, Vigneron was VP of Prod­uct Devel­op­ment Engi­neer­ing and Chief Engi­neer at Vir­gin Hyper­loop, where he led the devel­op­ment of the Hyper­loop sys­tem, a new mode of trans­porta­tion from require­ments cap­ture through design, build and test. 

He also held lead­er­ship and tech­ni­cal roles at Bom­bardier and Das­sault Avi­a­tion, devel­op­ing type-cer­ti­fied air­craft from ini­tial con­cept through flight test­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Bri­an Yutko (Cred­it: Julie Boat­man)

Vigneron com­ment­ed, “Hav­ing been deeply involved in Wisk’s jour­ney over the last four years, this is an excit­ing time for the com­pa­ny and AAM as a whole. I look for­ward to guid­ing our tal­ent­ed team through this crit­i­cal stage and lever­ag­ing the enhanced col­lab­o­ra­tion with Boe­ing to bring safe, autonomous flight to every­day life.” 

Bri­an Yutko is to become VP of Prod­uct Devel­op­ment at BCA. In this role, he will pro­vide strate­gic over­sight and sup­port to Wisk.

Yutko com­ment­ed, “I am hon­oured to join the sto­ried Prod­uct Devel­op­ment team at Boe­ing and to con­nect the pio­neer­ing tech­nolo­gies and bold spir­it of inno­va­tion we’ve cul­ti­vat­ed at Wisk. Sebastien is an incred­i­ble leader and I look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to work close­ly with him and the Wisk team as we fly Gen 6, progress our cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram and enter ser­vice.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://wisk.aero/

(Top image: Sebastien Vigneron — cred­it: Wisk Aero)

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