Elroy Air Expands Executive Leadership

Elroy Air has expand­ed its exec­u­tive lead­er­ship to include Alex Blake, uncrewed aero­space exec­u­tive from Wing (for­mer­ly Google X), Ama­zon Prime Air, and Kit­ty­hawk, as Chief of Staff, and Zach Lover­ing as Vice Pres­i­dent of Engi­neer­ing.

Elroy Air co-founder Clint Cope com­ment­ed: “Alex’s many years of expe­ri­ence in mov­ing new aero­space con­cepts from idea to proof-of-con­cept to oper­a­tional real­i­ty brings an incred­i­ble set of strengths to our organ­i­sa­tion.”

Most recent­ly, Blake served as VP of Engi­neer­ing at Kit­ty­hawk where she played a cen­tral role in dri­ving the devel­op­ment of a ground­break­ing elec­tric autonomous air taxi, backed by Google/Alphabet founder Lar­ry Page.

She was a mem­ber of the team at Google X that devel­oped drone deliv­ery and UTM sys­tems, even­tu­al­ly split­ting off as Wing, a sub­sidiary of Alpha­bet with oper­a­tions on three con­ti­nents. At Wing, she led aero­dy­nam­ics, propul­sion, reli­a­bil­i­ty, and flight test, aid­ing in the 1st FAA oper­a­tional approval for a com­mer­cial drone ser­vice in the US.

She also served as a launch lead for Ama­zon Prime Air’s next gen­er­a­tion drone deliv­ery sys­tem, qual­i­ty man­ag­er for Google’s high alti­tude solar drone Titan, man­u­fac­tur­ing engi­neer for Sier­ra Space’s Dream Chas­er space flight vehi­cle, and mate­ri­als devel­op­ment engi­neer at Raytheon.

Blake added: “I believe Elroy Air is at the fore­front of a crit­i­cal seg­ment of the mar­ket. The Chap­ar­ral has broad appli­ca­tions for mid­dle-mile logis­tics in the com­mer­cial space, defence resup­ply, and human­i­tar­i­an aid.”

Elroy Air co-founder and CEO David Mer­rill con­tin­ued: “Zach led the team at A³ by Air­bus as they built and flew the Vahana eVTOL air­craft all the way through tran­si­tion over more than 138 flights.”

As Vice Pres­i­dent for Urban Mobil­i­ty Sys­tems at Air­bus, Zach over­saw Urban Mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions in the US and was respon­si­ble for the end-to-end sys­tem inte­gra­tion of next gen­er­a­tion air­craft into our air­space and cities.

He led the company’s flag­ship eVTOL demon­stra­tor pro­gram, Vahana, orig­i­nal­ly as its found­ing Chief Engi­neer then as Project Exec­u­tive at Air­bus’s Sil­i­con Val­ley inno­va­tion cen­tre. Zach also led rotor blade pro­grams at Heli­copter Tech­nol­o­gy Com­pa­ny, and worked on the struc­tures, propul­sion, and aero-per­for­mance teams at Zee.Aero, now Wisk.

Lover­ing con­clud­ed “By com­bin­ing the ben­e­fits of high-pow­er bat­ter­ies with ener­gy-effi­cient tur­bo­gen­er­a­tors, Elroy Air is able to bal­ance range, speed, and pay­load capa­bil­i­ty for a wide vari­ety of glob­al cus­tomers. I am excit­ed to merge my decade-long expe­ri­ence in eVTOL sys­tem design with that of the high­ly capa­ble Elroy Air team to accel­er­ate devel­op­ment and pro­duc­ti­za­tion.”

In his role, Lover­ing is focussed on grow­ing the Engi­neer­ing func­tion at Elroy Air with a focus on its Pow­er­train, Auton­o­my, Inte­gra­tion, and Flight Test­ing teams.

In May, Elroy Air demon­strat­ed the autonomous ground nav­i­ga­tion and car­go-han­dling sys­tems of its Chap­ar­ral air­craft for Unit­ed States Air Force senior and exec­u­tive offi­cers, as part of the Gold­en Phoenix Tech­nol­o­gy Demon­stra­tion Event in Cal­i­for­nia.

Elroy Air demon­strates autonomous car­go-han­dling capa­bil­i­ties of its Chap­ar­ral air­craft at Travis Air Force Base