ASG, Avtrain and VectorCap team up to create Europe’s first eVTOL aircraft-approved pilot training business, VertX Aero

Europe’s first eVTOL air­craft-approved pilot train­ing organ­i­sa­tion has been launched this week, as a part­ner­ship between three Irish organ­i­sa­tions – ASG, Vec­tor­Cap, and Avtrain.

VertX Aero was launched with An Tánaiste Leo Varad­kar at the Dubai Air­show — which was held from Novem­ber 14th to 18th — and aims to become a key enabler for the future safe use of eVTOL air­craft through pilot train­ing.

The new com­pa­ny com­bines the strengths of ASG, Vec­tor­Cap and Avtrain, which already have proven track records as approved providers of avi­a­tion and train­ing, com­pli­ance and over­sight and com­mer­cial devel­op­ment and growth.

Speak­ing ear­li­er this week, VertX Aero co-founder Julie Gar­land said: “We have entered a new era of Aer­i­al Mobil­i­ty with eVTOL air­craft and bring­ing the exper­tise and com­bined expe­ri­ence of these three company’s togeth­er ensures the stan­dards and equiv­a­lent lev­el of safe­ty of manned avi­a­tion.

“This her­alds a new era of hybrid heli­copter and fixed wing pilots and the time­ly release of EASA NPA 2021-12 on New Air Mobil­i­ty will give the required reg­u­la­to­ry struc­ture.”

The pri­ma­ry objec­tives of VertX Aero are:

• To devel­op the stan­dards for the UAS Cer­ti­fied cat­e­go­ry and in par­tic­u­lar the pilot licenc­ing and Oper­a­tor Approvals for eVTOL air­craft and all air­craft oper­at­ing in the UAS Cer­ti­fied Cat­e­go­ry
• To offer online and in per­son train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for pilots and oper­a­tors in the UAS Cer­ti­fied cat­e­go­ry for both the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge and prac­ti­cal com­pe­tences towards the grant of an ini­tial EASA licence
• To offer con­tin­u­ous appraisal, check­ing and retrain­ing for pilots and oper­a­tors in the UAS Cer­ti­fied cat­e­go­ry for both the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge and prac­ti­cal com­pe­tences towards the renew­al of EASA licence and Air Oper­a­tor Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion
• To pro­vide con­sul­tan­cy to eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­ers for the flight test­ing of pro­to­type air­craft and their intro­duc­tion to com­mer­cial flight oper­a­tions

ASG is an Approved Train­ing Organ­i­sa­tion of the Euro­pean Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) per­mit­ted to deliv­er avi­a­tion train­ing up to and includ­ing Air Trans­port Pilot Licence the­o­ry train­ing. Found­ed in Dublin in 2015, the com­pa­ny was one of the first avi­a­tion train­ing providers in Europe to receive approval to deliv­er all of its reg­u­lat­ed class­room train­ing via remote means; their learn­ing facil­i­ties are equipped with 4K web­cams and RØDE broad­cast qual­i­ty micro­phones.

Avtrain’s mis­sion is to encour­age pro­lif­ic drone oper­a­tions and keep the skies safe through cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and the high­est stan­dards of train­ing. The com­pa­ny cer­ti­fies drone pilots and oper­a­tors for all fixed wing, hybrid, sin­gle and mul­ti-rotor drones in all weight cat­e­gories.

It also holds an approval as an EASA Recog­nised Enti­ty issued by the Irish Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (IAA) for the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge, prac­ti­cal train­ing & assess­ments and rec­om­men­da­tions to the Author­i­ty for the grant of EASA Open A2 and all Spe­cif­ic Cat­e­go­ry Autho­ri­sa­tions, Dec­la­ra­tions & Light UAS oper­a­tor Cer­tifi­cate. 

While Vec­tor­Cap, an Irish based aero­space invest­ment man­ag­er, is seek­ing to invest and part­ner with SME busi­ness­es exclu­sive­ly in the avi­a­tion and aero­space indus­tries.

Fel­low co-founder Hugo McNul­ty, said: “Vec­tor­Cap is excit­ed to part­ner with Avtrain and ASG to fur­ther the devel­op­ment of drone pilot train­ing advance­ments and estab­lish the worlds first eVTOL Pilot train­ing cen­tre of excel­lence.

“This turnkey solu­tion will offer new air oper­a­tor entrants access to air­line pilot qual­i­ty train­ing and exam­i­na­tion of their eVTOL air­crew, to ensure the high­est oper­a­tional safe­ty stan­dards, in this excit­ing new indus­try.”

Co-Founder Diar­muid O’Riordan, added: “We look for­ward to work­ing hand in hand with reg­u­la­tors across the world to assist with the devel­op­ment of new reg­u­la­tions, safe­ty risk man­age­ment and com­pli­ance pro­to­cols, oper­a­tional pro­ce­dures, Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment (ATM) solu­tions, and robust train­ing cours­es to sup­port the safe intro­duc­tion of elec­tric urban air mobil­i­ty, and to become the industry’s lead­ing train­ing provider in this new, inno­v­a­tive, and envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly era of urban air trans­porta­tion”.