Former Airbus Japan President Stéphane Ginoux Joins SkyDrive as Advisor

Sky­Drive has appoint­ed Stéphane Ginoux, for­mer Pres­i­dent of Air­bus Japan and Head of Air­bus oper­a­tions in North Asia, as an advi­sor as the Japan­ese eVTOL devel­op­er works to advance com­mer­cial­iza­tion of its air­craft.

Ginoux joined Sky­Drive on August 1, 2026, bring­ing around three decades of avi­a­tion indus­try expe­ri­ence. Dur­ing his time at Air­bus, he was involved in expand­ing the company’s busi­ness in Japan and across North Asia, while devel­op­ing rela­tion­ships with cor­po­ra­tions, gov­ern­ment agen­cies and research insti­tu­tions.

After join­ing Sky­Drive, Ginoux will help the com­pa­ny achieve its declared mis­sion of “lead­ing a once-in-a-cen­tu­ry mobil­i­ty rev­o­lu­tion”, cre­at­ing a world in which eVTOL trav­el becomes a reg­u­lar fea­ture of city life.

Sky­Drive aims to har­ness Ginoux’s broad net­work of gov­ern­ment and busi­ness part­ners, in addi­tion to the exten­sive busi­ness devel­op­ment expe­ri­ence gained at Air­bus. Ginoux will pro­vide strate­gic sup­port across a wide range of areas includ­ing busi­ness devel­op­ment in Japan and Asia, stake­hold­er engage­ment with gov­ern­ments, local author­i­ties, and indus­try asso­ci­a­tions, and also col­lab­o­ra­tion with busi­ness part­ners.

Sky­Drive CEO Tomo­hi­ro Fukuza­wa said the devel­op­ment of an eVTOL busi­ness will require more than air­craft cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and pro­duc­tion:

“Prof­itable eVTOL busi­ness­es will not be built only through suc­cess­ful air­craft devel­op­ment. True mar­ket suc­cess will require wide-rang­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with part­ners in var­i­ous fields of gov­ern­ment and indus­try across mul­ti­ple fields includ­ing oper­a­tions, reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance, and infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment. By draw­ing on Ginoux’s rich expe­ri­ence and inter­na­tion­al net­work, we will fur­ther accel­er­ate the dri­ve to devel­op and launch our Japan-based eVTOL and then scale it inter­na­tion­al­ly”.

Ginoux began his career in Japan in 1992 through a French gov­ern­ment assign­ment, work­ing with Japan’s Min­istry of Inter­na­tion­al Trade and Indus­try, JETRO and the French Embassy. He joined Euro­copter, now Air­bus Heli­copters, in 1996 and lat­er estab­lished Air­bus Heli­copters Japan in 2009.

He became Pres­i­dent of Air­bus Japan in 2010 and sub­se­quent­ly took on broad­er respon­si­bil­i­ties cov­er­ing Air­bus’ activ­i­ties in North Asia, includ­ing Japan and South Korea. His tenure includ­ed efforts to expand Air­bus’ com­mer­cial air­craft busi­ness in Japan, devel­op its heli­copter oper­a­tions and strength­en rela­tion­ships with Japan­ese indus­try and gov­ern­ment.

Ginoux retired from Air­bus in June 2025 and has since pro­vid­ed strate­gic advi­so­ry sup­port to Japan­ese and inter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies.

“One hun­dred years ago, human­i­ty first suc­ceed­ed in fly­ing like birds, if only for a few sec­onds. Today, we can trav­el by air­plane to vir­tu­al­ly any des­ti­na­tion on Earth in less than a day. The next step is to enable peo­ple to use the sky as nat­u­ral­ly as they use the ground, giv­ing peo­ple even greater free­dom in the way they move. The val­ue that this new form of mobil­i­ty can bring to soci­ety is clear.”

“I am hon­ored to join Sky­Drive in this excit­ing chal­lenge of bring­ing this trans­for­ma­tive mode of trans­porta­tion to Japan and the world in the best pos­si­ble way.”

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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