Eamonn Brennan joins Vertical Aerospace as advisor to its Board, strengthening company’s regulatory expertise

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has appoint­ed Eamonn Bren­nan as an advis­er to its Board, strength­en­ing the company’s reg­u­la­to­ry exper­tise as it pro­gress­es towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. 

Bren­nan has been a cen­tral fig­ure in Euro­pean avi­a­tion for many years, includ­ing serv­ing as Direc­tor Gen­er­al of Euro­con­trol, the organ­i­sa­tion respon­si­ble for coor­di­nat­ing and man­ag­ing air traf­fic con­trol across Europe, from 2018 to 2022. He was also Chief Exec­u­tive of the Irish Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (IAA), the civ­il avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tor for Ire­land, from 2003 to 2017.

Bren­nan joins as the com­pa­ny recent­ly com­plet­ed pilot­ed thrust­borne test­ing for its VX4 pro­to­type and con­tin­ues work­ing with the CAA to expand its flight enve­lope ahead of wing­borne flight.

Com­ment­ing on his new role, he said: “Ver­ti­cal is redefin­ing how the world moves, but cer­ti­fy­ing a nov­el air­craft is hard. With deep exper­tise and strong rela­tion­ships across the reg­u­la­to­ry ecosys­tem glob­al­ly, I’ll be sup­port­ing Ver­ti­cal in nav­i­gat­ing the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process and ensur­ing the VX4 becomes the safest air­craft in the mar­ket.

“Backed by world-class tal­ent and cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy, Ver­ti­cal is well-posi­tioned to lead the sec­tor, and I’m delight­ed to be part of this jour­ney.”

Dur­ing his tenure at Euro­con­trol and the IAA, Bren­nan worked close­ly with the Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) and helped dri­ve sig­nif­i­cant advance­ments in Euro­pean avi­a­tion, includ­ing through his advo­ca­cy of the Sin­gle Euro­pean Sky pro­gramme. 

His deep under­stand­ing of reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process­es across mul­ti­ple juris­dic­tions, com­bined with his exper­tise in air­space man­age­ment, will be invalu­able as Ver­ti­cal nav­i­gates the com­plex cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments for its eVTOL air­craft, the VX4. 

Stu­art Simp­son, CEO at Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, said: “We are thrilled to wel­come Eamonn to Ver­ti­cal at such a cru­cial and excit­ing stage in our jour­ney. Nav­i­gat­ing the reg­u­la­to­ry land­scape is one of the biggest chal­lenges in pio­neer­ing elec­tric avi­a­tion, and hav­ing some­one of Eamonn’s cal­i­bre advis­ing us is a huge advan­tage.

“His insights and expe­ri­ence build on our already strong team in this area and will help us accel­er­ate our cer­ti­fi­ca­tion efforts and shape a new era of trav­el.”

Mr. Brennan’s arrival fol­lows the recent return of indus­try vet­er­an Domh­nal Slat­tery as Chair, along with Vertical’s launch of its Flight­path 2030 strat­e­gy and suc­cess­ful upsized $90m under­writ­ten pub­lic offer­ing.