Aerospace experts join Skyports to progress its advanced air mobility plans within the Americas

Sky­ports has made two new appoint­ments, with Addi­son Fer­rell join­ing the com­pa­ny as its new Head of Amer­i­c­as and Andrew Giaci­ni as Reg­u­la­to­ry Affairs Lead.

In his new role, Fer­rell will dri­ve the devel­op­ment of ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture and the imple­men­ta­tion of com­mer­cial drone deliv­er­ies. He will also lead Sky­ports’ efforts to build pub­lic accep­tance and trust in advanced air mobil­i­ty across the Amer­i­c­as.  

While as Reg­u­la­to­ry Affairs Lead, Giaci­ni will devel­op and imple­ment Sky­ports reg­u­la­to­ry strat­e­gy and tech­ni­cal require­ments to enable the inte­gra­tion of advanced air mobil­i­ty. He will also play a crit­i­cal role in cul­ti­vat­ing com­mer­cial and strate­gic rela­tion­ships both with­in the Amer­i­c­as and across the world.

Com­ment­ing on these appoint­ments, Dun­can Walk­er, CEO at Sky­ports, said: “Addi­son and Andrew join­ing the team will add sig­nif­i­cant strength to our oper­a­tions in the Amer­i­c­as at an excit­ing time in Sky­ports’ growth. 

“These appoint­ments will enable us to shift gear in our oper­a­tions across the region. With his back­ground in busi­ness lead­er­ship and engi­neer­ing, Addi­son will be a dri­ving force behind mak­ing the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of advanced air mobil­i­ty a real­i­ty.” 

Fer­rell has 13 years of com­mer­cial and tech­ni­cal expe­ri­ence in the avi­a­tion and auto­mo­tive indus­tries. He pre­vi­ous­ly worked at GE Avi­a­tion, before com­plet­ing an MBA at Har­vard Busi­ness School in 2016 and then join­ing McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny.

First, he was an asso­ciate and then an engage­ment man­ag­er, work­ing on pro­grammes such as aero­space man­u­fac­tur­er after­mar­ket growth trans­for­ma­tion, avi­a­tion ser­vices provider cor­po­rate strat­e­gy, and auto­mo­tive sup­pli­er com­mer­cial nego­ti­a­tions.  

While Giaci­ni brings impor­tant insight of avi­a­tion pol­i­cy and the U.S. reg­u­la­to­ry envi­ron­ment to the role. He has more than five years’ expe­ri­ence work­ing in gov­ern­men­tal and indus­try affairs, first­ly with­in U.S. Con­gress and sub­se­quent­ly for the Depart­ment of Trans­port and Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion.

Fer­rell said: “I am eager to apply my expe­ri­ence and long held pas­sion for the aero­space indus­try to advance the future of AAM. I look for­ward to work­ing close­ly with AAM lead­ers to com­bine my oper­a­tional and reg­u­la­to­ry expe­ri­ence with Sky­ports’ exper­tise in ver­ti­port and drone deliv­ery in order to expand oper­a­tions across the Amer­i­c­as.” 

Giaci­ni added: “The future of advanced air mobil­i­ty is excit­ing, with count­less oppor­tu­ni­ties. Join­ing Sky­ports as Reg­u­la­to­ry Affairs Lead, I look for­ward to shap­ing pol­i­cy and defin­ing Sky­ports’ role as a leader in the avi­a­tion and AAM indus­try.”   

Out­side of the Amer­i­c­as, Sky­ports has start­ed to grow its pres­ence in Asia for the emerg­ing eVTOL mar­ket. The com­pa­ny’s Head of Asia Pacif­ic, Yun-yuan Tay, spoke to eVTOL Insights about the com­pa­ny’s plans for the region as part of a pod­cast.

It is also part­ner­ing with Japan­ese trad­ing com­pa­ny Kane­mat­su to help launch advanced air mobil­i­ty in Japan, which will include car­go and pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing ser­vices.

As well as its work in infra­struc­ture design, Sky­ports spe­cialis­es in drone deliv­ery through its logis­tics arm, Deliv­ery by Sky­ports. It  is already prov­ing the via­bil­i­ty of the company’s best-in-class unmanned sys­tems tech­nolo­gies with­in the med­ical, e‑commerce and logis­tics sec­tors. 

It announced last week that will work with Kenya Air­ways to set up UAS oper­a­tions in the coun­try.

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