Former Airbus Urban Air Mobility CEO joins Vertical Aerospace as its new Chief Commercial Officer

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has appoint­ed for­mer CEO of Air­bus Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, Eduar­do Dominguez Puer­ta, as its first Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer.

In this new­ly cre­at­ed role, Puer­ta will dri­ve com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion and the path to mar­ket for Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, which is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing its VA-X4 eVTOL air­craft. The com­pa­ny’s planned roadmap tar­gets cer­ti­fi­ca­tion with EASA and the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty by 2024.

Com­ment­ing on his new role, he said: “I chose Ver­ti­cal because they have a proven leader, a team who will deliv­er, a plan that works, and the best part­ners in the mar­ket. This is a great time to join this inno­v­a­tive com­pa­ny that is at the cusp of the next break­through in avi­a­tion.”

At Air­bus, Puer­ta was respon­si­ble for the sub­sidiary in charge of devel­op­ment, design and man­u­fac­tur­ing of eVTOLs, includ­ing tech­nol­o­gy, reg­u­la­tion, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, infra­struc­ture, unmanned air traf­fic man­age­ment and rideshar­ing ser­vices.

Pri­or to run­ning Urban Air Mobil­i­ty at Air­bus, he played a cru­cial role in set­ting up A3 — the advanced projects and part­ner­ships out­post of Air­bus Group in Sil­i­con Val­ley — where he served as Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, he held sev­er­al exec­u­tive posi­tions at the com­pa­ny, over­see­ing Sup­pli­er Devel­op­ment and Lean Man­age­ment. He received a Mas­ters Degree in Indus­tri­al Engi­neer­ing from Uni­ver­si­dad Pon­ti­f­i­cia de Comil­las in Spain in 2002

With his broad expe­ri­ence and track-record of build­ing part­ner­ships across the avi­a­tion indus­try, includ­ing with air safe­ty agen­cies, Puer­ta’s role will be inte­gral to Vertical’s suc­cess as it enters the next phase of its jour­ney. The VA-X4 is pilot­ed and will be able to trans­port four pas­sen­gers over 100 miles at speeds of more than 200mph. Ver­ti­cal has said the air­craft is 100 times qui­eter than a heli­copter.

Stephen Fitz­patrick, Founder and CEO of Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, added: “This is the most excit­ing time in avi­a­tion for the last 70 years. The elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of flight at scale will trans­form the way peo­ple trav­el and with Eduar­do join­ing our team we fur­ther strength­en the skills and expe­ri­ence to make this a real­i­ty.”

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