Stéphan D’haene Becomes New CEO of eVTOL Company Jetson

Jet­son, an up-and-com­ing Swe­den-based eVTOL com­pa­ny, has cho­sen Stéphan D’haene as its new CEO, reports a press release. He joins Jet­son from Amer­i­can Avi­a­tion com­pa­ny ICON Air­craft, where he served as COO since 2021 and led the turn­around of its Engi­neer­ing and Man­u­fac­tur­ing Oper­a­tions. D’haene brings exten­sive indus­try expe­ri­ence and a proven track record of dri­ving growth and inno­va­tion in the Avi­a­tion Indus­try. 

Jet­son has cre­at­ed its Jet­son ONE, a sin­gle pilot­ed and per­son­al eVTOL air­craft con­struct­ed in alu­mini­um and car­bon fibre, which is pow­ered by eight pow­er­ful elec­tric motors. It has a flight time of 20 min­utes on one charge with a top speed of 63 mph.

Stéphan D’haene, the new CEO of Jet­son

D’haene enthused, “See­ing the Jet­son for the first time around 18 months ago, I was extreme­ly excit­ed about this fly­ing con­cept vehi­cle. The craft has a very high WOW fac­tor. Jet­son ONE is not an air taxi type of vehi­cle. It’s real­ly a recre­ation­al vehi­cle tar­get­ed at pas­sion­ate own­er pilots. It’s the future.”

He con­tin­ued, “The dream of fly­ing has nev­er been more acces­si­ble with the par­a­digm shift­ing Jet­son ONE, pow­ered by an envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able elec­tric dri­ve­train. Togeth­er, we will push the bound­aries of what is pos­si­ble in the eVTOL indus­try and deliv­er game-chang­ing solu­tions that will have a pos­i­tive impact on the envi­ron­ment and soci­ety as a whole.”

Before join­ing ICON, D’haene held sev­er­al exec­u­tive posi­tions at mul­ti­ple record win­ning light sport air­craft com­pa­nies includ­ing Sweden’s Black­wing and Port Avi­a­tion Group in Italy. Pre­vi­ous­ly, with 10 years at BRP, the World’s lead­ing Pow­er­sport Com­pa­ny, D’haene had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to gain expe­ri­ence of the recre­ation­al pow­er­sport busi­ness.

D’haene told aviationtoday.com, “Safe­ty is top pri­or­i­ty. If it means we get delayed two or three months with get­ting in pro­duc­tion, then so be it. I have learned from work­ing in the avi­a­tion indus­try that you can­not com­pro­mise on safe­ty, and we will not.”

A big part of the com­pa­ny’s focus is to deter­mine add-ons for the air­craft to fur­ther improve safe­ty. He explained, “We have a redun­dant flight com­put­er, we have redun­dant motors, we are inte­grat­ing a para­chute res­cue sys­tem, and now we’re putting a lot of effort in fine-tun­ing the pro­gram­ming of the sup­port­ive autopi­lot so that when peo­ple fly it, they can­not get them­selves in dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions.”

D’haene believes Jet­son will become a leader in the per­son­al eVTOL cat­e­go­ry as the mar­ket evolves over the long-term. “The FAA’s approach to reg­u­la­tions will dic­tate to a large degree how the larg­er mar­ket evolves,” he explained, allud­ing to the MOSAIC (Mod­erni­sa­tion of Spe­cial Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­tifi­cates) project as a restruc­tur­ing of the light-sport air­craft (LSA) cat­e­go­ry. Jet­son is antic­i­pat­ing an update on that rule­mak­ing.

A chal­lenge being, if the com­pa­ny decides to include a sec­ond seat in its air­craft, there isn’t exist­ing reg­u­la­tion to sup­port cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for that air­craft.

But D’haene point­ed out, “I believe Jet­son has the engi­neer­ing team and the capa­bil­i­ty to explore a new mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty open­ing and, if it makes sense, to offer a prod­uct in that cat­e­go­ry. We believe that in the short term, the mar­ket for the sin­gle-seat recre­ation­al Jet­son is big enough for a very inter­est­ing, sus­tain­able busi­ness.”

The com­pa­ny has already received 500 orders for the Jet­son ONE. Two key objec­tives in the short-term, are to finalise the def­i­n­i­tion of the prod­uct and to begin mass pro­duc­tion. Mean­while, Jetson’s team is con­sid­er­ing var­i­ous part­ner­ships and col­lab­o­ra­tions and are in dis­cus­sions with a cou­ple of par­ties, but none have yet been made offi­cial.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.jetsonaero.com/

(News Source: www.aviationtoday.com)

(Images: Jet­son)