Former Bombardier, Vertical Aerospace and CAE engineering leader Richard Alexander joins Horizon Aircraft

Hori­zon Air­craft has announced renowned air­craft engi­neer­ing leader Richard Alexan­der has joined the com­pa­ny as its Chief Engi­neer of Cer­ti­fied Pro­grams.

The appoint­ment comes as Hori­zon Air­craft advances its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy, engi­neer­ing mat­u­ra­tion, and com­mer­cial­iza­tion plan­ning for its hybrid-elec­tric VTOL air­craft, the Cavorite X7.

Richard will com­bine his expe­ri­ence with that of the Company’s Co-Founder, Bri­an Robin­son, to help deliv­er an oper­a­tional­ly ready and cer­ti­fi­able air­craft.

Hori­zon Air­craft Co-Founder and CEO Bran­don Robin­son, said: “Richard’s appoint­ment brings excep­tion­al engi­neer­ing lead­er­ship and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion exper­tise to Hori­zon Air­craft. Wel­com­ing him to our team will play a sig­nif­i­cant role in advanc­ing the devel­op­ment and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of our hybrid eVTOL and strength­en our path toward com­mer­cial­iza­tion.”

Alexan­der is wide­ly respect­ed across the aero­space indus­try hav­ing man­aged high­ly tech­ni­cal
and spe­cial­ized projects that advance the design, devel­op­ment, build and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of air­craft.

With 38 years of air­craft devel­op­ment expe­ri­ence, Alexan­der has led key engi­neer­ing func­tions across mul­ti­ple air­craft pro­grams at Bom­bardier, was Head of Flight Physics at Ver­ti­cal Aero­space for its VX4 eVTOL pro­gram, and most recent­ly served as CAE’s Elec­tric Air­craft Inte­gra­tor, lead­ing the bat­tery-elec­tric con­ver­sion of the Piper Archer train­ing air­craft.

Alexan­der added: “I am real­ly excit­ed to be on board with the Hori­zon Air­craft team to help devel­op a vehi­cle with real-life util­i­ty. The abil­i­ty to take-off and land ver­ti­cal­ly using the dis­trib­uted elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem and then deploy using con­ven­tion­al propul­sion allows rapid, extend­ed dura­tion deploy­ment to remote regions with lit­tle or no infra­struc­ture, enabling a myr­i­ad of mis­sion pos­si­bil­i­ties.”

Hori­zon Air­craft is devel­op­ing one of the world’s first hybrid-elec­tric VTOL (Ver­ti­cal Take-Off and Land­ing) air­craft designed to fly most of its mis­sion in tra­di­tion­al wing-borne flight, offer­ing indus­try-lead­ing
speed, range, and oper­a­tional util­i­ty.

Hori­zon Air­craft’s unique designs put the mis­sion first and pri­or­i­tize safe­ty and per­for­mance. Upon suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of test­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its full-scale air­craft, Hori­zon Air­craft intends to scale unit pro­duc­tion to meet expect­ed demand from region­al oper­a­tors, emer­gency ser­vice providers, and mil­i­tary cus­tomers.