AIR appoints director of certification & airworthiness

AIR last week hired Matthew Smith as direc­tor of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion & air­wor­thi­ness, bring­ing with him over 30 years of expe­ri­ence in aero­space, and hav­ing played a piv­otal role in the FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of many new air­craft.

Pri­or to join­ing AIR, Smith man­aged the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of mul­ti­ple Depart­ment of Defense air­craft, direct­ed the engi­neer­ing depart­ment at Gulf­stream Aero­space, and also served as the lead FAA Orga­ni­za­tion­al Del­e­ga­tion Autho­riza­tion admin­is­tra­tor on the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of numer­ous air­craft.

He was also part of the team which cer­ti­fied many pop­u­lar aero­space inno­va­tions, includ­ing the first high-speed inter­net aboard a com­mer­cial air­craft, the world’s first syn­thet­ic vision sys­tem for an air­craft, and the first FAA Tech­ni­cal Stan­dard Order Class III Elec­tron­ic Flight Bag.

“I am thrilled to be com­ing onboard at AIR, where togeth­er with an excep­tion­al team, we will pro­pel the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process of AIR’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary vehi­cle, AIR ONE,” said Smith.

“We envi­sion a world in which eVTOLs are seam­less­ly embraced by every­day com­muters, trans­form­ing the way we move and con­nect. It is won­der­ful to be able to con­tribute to the wide­spread adop­tion of eVTOL air­craft through the con­sumer mar­ket.”

The com­pa­ny has gen­er­at­ed over 400 AIR ONE pre-orders for the first deliv­ery of vehi­cles and a wait­list of 300 for the fol­low­ing batch. AIR plans to relo­cate its head­quar­ters to the US to fur­ther aid in the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process and where it will begin full scale pro­duc­tion of its air­craft.

CEO and co-founder Rani Plaut added: “We are at a piv­otal moment in avi­a­tion his­to­ry, where eVTOL adop­tion is at our fin­ger­tips. But to ensure that this vision is realised, the indus­try needs strong sup­port from reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies to accel­er­ate cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for these vehi­cles.

“With Matthew’s exper­tise as an indus­try lead­ing aero­space pro­fes­sion­al, we are con­fi­dent that he will help make this dream a real­i­ty and are look­ing for­ward to the incred­i­ble achieve­ments we will secure togeth­er.”

Last Decem­ber, AIR per­formed suc­cess­ful for­ward flight test­ing of its full-scale pro­to­type, AIR ONE, just five months after com­plet­ing its first hov­er flights, which kicked off thou­sands of hours of ongo­ing flight test­ing.

AIR’s eVTOL Com­pletes First Full Tran­si­tion to Cruise Flight