Blade Urban Air Mobility creates Blade Europe business and appoints two industry leaders

Blade Air Mobil­i­ty has cre­at­ed Blade Europe, to be head­quar­tered in Paris, France, and appoint­ed Sab­ri­na Bar­bera as Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, with Anne-Pas­cale Gue­don as Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment. 

Bar­bera has near­ly 20 years of expe­ri­ence in aero­space and avi­a­tion and is cur­rent­ly Vice-Pres­i­dent of Air­bus Heli­copters, over­see­ing its Sim­u­la­tion and Train­ing depart­ment for over 8,000 pilots and tech­ni­cians each year, hav­ing con­sum­mat­ed 45 acqui­si­tions, divesti­tures, and strate­gic alliances for the com­pa­ny includ­ing Air­bus Heli­copters’ invest­ment in Blade in 2018.

Gue­don was most recent­ly Vice-Pres­i­dent of Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Devel­op­ment, report­ing to Air­bus’ Group Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, with 20 years of inter­na­tion­al expe­ri­ence as a for­mer invest­ment banker, and for the last 12 years with Air­bus, where she invest­ed and over­saw deploy­ment of cor­po­rate funds in more than 30 coun­tries.

Rob Wiesen­thal, CEO of Blade Air Mobil­i­ty said: “I have known Sab­ri­na since she spear­head­ed Airbus’s invest­ment in Blade and her cre­ativ­i­ty and excep­tion­al dri­ve, as well as her knowl­edge of the tran­si­tion path from heli­copters to Elec­tric Ver­ti­cal Air­craft in urban air mobil­i­ty, make her unique­ly suit­ed to ful­fill this impor­tant role.

“Beyond her tenure at Air­bus, Anne-Pas­cale advised aero­space indus­try lead­ers includ­ing lau­re­ates of the Paris Gen­er­al Coun­sel, the Groupe ADP, the own­er and man­ag­er of Parisian inter­na­tion­al air­ports as well as RATP Alliance, the world’s fourth largest trans­port oper­a­tor. 

“Her knowl­edge of the reg­u­la­to­ry land­scape, as well as her long-stand­ing Euro­pean gov­ern­ment rela­tion­ships, will undoubt­ed­ly super­charge Blade’s expan­sion through­out Europe.”

Bar­bera said: “The scale and glob­al strength of Air­bus Heli­copters has enabled me to appre­ci­ate the sig­nif­i­cant growth oppor­tu­ni­ty in urban air mobil­i­ty, cou­pled with my work with Rob and Blade’s senior man­age­ment team on Air­bus’ invest­ment in Blade.”

Gue­don added: “My expe­ri­ence at Air­bus Group in heli­copters, drones, and fixed-wing air­craft has enabled me to play an impor­tant role in the devel­op­ment of urban air mobil­i­ty. 

“I have been con­sult­ing with Blade in Europe for over a year and I am very excit­ed to show the key con­stituents of the Euro­pean urban air mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem the unique capa­bil­i­ties Blade can bring to bear across the con­ti­nent.”

In Decem­ber last year, Blade Air Mobil­i­ty acquired exclu­sive rights to offer sched­uled heli­copter flights oper­at­ed by Heli­jet in Cana­da and across the US Pacif­ic North­west region, with plans to incor­po­rate eVTOL air­craft on routes.

Pre­vi­ous­ly in June 2021, Wisk announced that it would pro­vide, oper­ate and main­tain up to 30 eVTOL air­craft for Blade Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, to be used on short-dis­tance routes between Blade’s net­work of ter­mi­nals through­out the USA, fol­low­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the FAA.