Retired US Air Force Colonel appointed to Bye Aerospace’s Board of Directors

Bye Aero­space has appoint­ed Colonel Rod Zas­trow (USAF, Ret.), a senior inter­na­tion­al pilot and main­te­nance train­ing exec­u­tive, to its Board of Direc­tors.

Zas­trow served in the US Air Force for 26 years and began his career as an F‑15 air supe­ri­or­i­ty pilot, then grad­u­at­ed from USAF Weapons School and flew com­bat mis­sions with and advised the Roy­al Sau­di Air Force dur­ing Oper­a­tion Desert Storm.

Lat­er assign­ments includ­ed serv­ing as the com­man­der of a 24 F‑15 squadron, deputy com­man­der of a 72-fight­er air­craft fly­ing oper­a­tion at RAF Lak­en­heath, in the Unit­ed King­dom, the vice com­man­der of Ram­stein Air­base, Germany’s 435^thAir Base Wing and com­man­der of an  F‑15, KC-135, and HH-60 air defense unit in Ice­land.

“It is quite an hon­our to wel­come Rod to our Board of Direc­tors,” said George Bye, CEO of Bye Aero­space.

“Fol­low­ing his retire­ment from his many years of ser­vice, includ­ing as an Air Force pilot, to our coun­try, Rod led the estab­lish­ment of a lead­ing inter­na­tion­al mil­i­tary flight train­ing acad­e­my, and led inter­na­tion­al busi­ness devel­op­ment for one of the ear­li­est flight school sup­port­ers of our eFly­er pro­gram. Pilot train­ing is one of our key mar­kets, and Rod’s knowl­edge as a pilot and as a flight school exec­u­tive will bring an impor­tant bal­ance to our Board.”

Before retir­ing in 2010, Zas­trow served as Chief of Staff of the Air Force’s senior rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the U.S. Army War Col­lege, and as lead pol­i­cy advi­sor on air supe­ri­or­i­ty air­craft and weapons for the Sec­re­tary of Defense.

Cur­rent­ly, he is serv­ing as Pres­i­dent and COO of Spar­tan Iraq, LLC, and Pres­i­dent of its par­ent com­pa­ny, Spar­tan Glob­al Avi­a­tion Train­ing, LLC. Zas­trow has a bachelor’s degree in aero­space engi­neer­ing, an MBA (avi­a­tion focus), and a sec­ond master’s degree in strate­gic stud­ies.

He added: “I am both hum­bled and excit­ed to join the Board of Direc­tors of this all-elec­tric gen­er­al avi­a­tion indus­try leader. As with his­toric avi­a­tion pio­neers, George Bye and Bye Aero­space con­tin­ue to demon­strate the inno­va­tion and pas­sion to accom­plish what oth­ers only imag­ine.

“Bye Aero­space is the avi­a­tion world’s trend set­ter for sus­tain­able, qui­et, cost-reduc­ing avi­a­tion plat­forms, as envi­sioned with the eFly­er fam­i­ly, for train­ing the world’s future pilot force, enabling fixed wing urban air mobil­i­ty and bring­ing for­ward an excit­ing Gold­en Age 2.0 for avi­a­tion.”

Bye Aero­space is FAA-cer­ti­fy­ing its two-seat, all-elec­tric eFly­er 2 for the pro­fes­sion­al flight train­ing mis­sion and four-seat eFly­er 4 for air-taxi and advanced train­ing uses.

The com­pa­ny says its cur­rent and future fam­i­lies of air­craft fea­ture exem­plary engi­neer­ing, research, and elec­tric air­craft solu­tions pro­duc­ing no CO₂ and are designed to answer com­pelling mar­ket needs, which include five-fold oper­at­ing costs, zero emis­sions and decreased noise.

It is also esti­mat­ed that the eFly­er will elim­i­nate the release of mil­lions of met­ric tons of CO₂ each year for flight train­ing alone.