Former Boeing Flight Test Engineer Dean Moore joins Vertical Aerospace

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has appoint­ed Boe­ing’s Dean Moore as its new Lead Flight Test Engi­neer.

With more than two decades of indus­try expe­ri­ence, Moore has worked on a vari­ety of air­craft types, includ­ing UAM, rotary and fixed-wing air­craft. Most recent­ly, he worked at Boe­ing on the Phan­tom project and pri­or to this, at Qine­tiQ as a Prin­ci­pal Flight Test Engi­neer. 

In his new role at Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, Moore will be respon­si­ble for lead­ing the flight test cam­paign for the first cer­ti­fi­able air­craft devel­oped by the Bris­tol-based firm.

This involves putting togeth­er the oper­a­tions man­u­al for flight test­ing, devel­op­ing strate­gic plans to help deliv­er flight test efforts and main­tain­ing align­ment through­out the teams.  

Com­ment­ing on his new role, he said: “It is very excit­ing to be join­ing Ver­ti­cal Aero­space at a piv­otal peri­od in a rapid­ly devel­op­ing area of the aero­space indus­try. I am look­ing for­ward to work­ing in a dynam­ic British aero­space start­up that is chang­ing the way we think about mobil­i­ty and air trans­port.

“It’s a fan­tas­tic chal­lenge to devel­op and deliv­er the flight test cam­paign, as we work towards the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of our winged eVTOL air­craft.  Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has made sig­nif­i­cant steps with the Proof of Con­cept & Ser­aph demon­stra­tors in such a short time and join­ing the team is a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to be able to con­tribute to its next big advance in real­is­ing car­bon free air trans­port.” 

Moore has spent time gen­er­at­ing and imple­ment­ing safe­ty cas­es for a range of autonomous vehi­cles, includ­ing direct­ing the test­ing of Wave Glid­er mar­itime plat­forms. 

He estab­lished and super­vised the Boe­ing UK test team in deliv­er­ing test activ­i­ties across a range of Chi­nook pro­grammes and sup­port­ed the test pro­gramme pro­pos­al for the recent­ly con­tract­ed UK E‑7 Wed­getail air­craft. 

He also achieved the first flight of the Chi­nook for Boe­ing under the UK Mil­i­tary Con­trac­tor Fly­ing Approved Organ­i­sa­tion Scheme in 2014. 

Michael Cer­ven­ka, CEO of Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, added: “We are delight­ed to wel­come Dean to this crit­i­cal role as we con­tin­ue to grow our world-class team. Dean brings exten­sive flight test expe­ri­ence across a wide range of nov­el plat­forms and he joins at the per­fect time to shape the flight test pro­gramme of our next gen­er­a­tion winged eVTOL.” 

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space is already a glob­al pio­neer in sus­tain­able avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies, being one of only a hand­ful of com­pa­nies to have flown and flight test­ed two full-scale all-elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (eVTOL) pro­to­types with UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty approval.

The lat­est, Ser­aph, can car­ry 250kg and reach speeds of 80km/h. Devel­op­ment of Ver­ti­cal Aerospace’s next gen­er­a­tion eVTOL is already well under­way and will soon be made pub­lic, with plans to have it ful­ly cer­ti­fied by 2024. The air­craft will be able to car­ry one pilot and four pas­sen­gers, up to 100 miles at speeds of 150mph.

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space is con­tin­u­ing to work along­side avi­a­tion author­i­ties around the world, build­ing strate­gic part­ner­ships with glob­al lead­ers such as Hon­ey­well, which is devel­op­ing the flight con­troller for its lat­est air­craft.