Urban Aeronautics appoints Nimrod Golan-Yanay as CEO, with Dr. Rafi Yoeli becoming President in new role

Urban Aero­nau­tics has appoint­ed Nim­rod Golan-Yanay as its new CEO, in a move that will see com­pa­ny founder, Dr. Rafi Yoeli, become Pres­i­dent.

Golan-Yanay was pre­vi­ous­ly Urban Aero­nau­tics’ Vice Pres­i­dent of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment and pri­or to join­ing the firm, he was a Vice Pres­i­dent at Amdocs, a lead­ing provider of soft­ware and ser­vices to com­mu­ni­ca­tions and media com­pa­nies.

Before that, Golan-Yanay served for 25 years in the Israeli Air Force (IAF), retir­ing with the rank of Lieu­tenant Colonel.

Com­ment­ing on his new role, he said: “I admire the inno­v­a­tive approach and ground­break­ing work accom­plished by Dr. Yoeli, which has result­ed in a game-chang­ing new con­cept in avi­a­tion. Togeth­er with our team and part­ners, we look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to rev­o­lu­tionise the world of air mobil­i­ty.”

Dr. Yoeli added: “I am pleased to wel­come Nim­rod to his new posi­tion. He has demon­strat­ed strong lead­er­ship and man­age­ment qual­i­ties through­out his career, which will serve him well going for­ward.

“After serv­ing for more than 20 years as CEO of Urban Aero­nau­tics, I look for­ward to focus­ing my ener­gy on sup­port­ing strate­gic devel­op­ment of the com­pa­ny and its tech­nol­o­gy.”

Urban Aero­nau­tics is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing manned vehi­cles for com­mer­cial air taxi and air res­cue roles, includ­ing its flag­ship City­Hawk, a six-seat light­weight twin-engine eVTOL air­craft.

In August 2020, the com­pa­ny signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing with Hat­zo­lah Air to devel­op, pro­duce and mar­ket the City­Hawk for emer­gency med­ical ser­vice (EMS) appli­ca­tions. And in June, it signed an agree­ment with HyPoint to incor­po­rate hydro­gen fuel cell pow­er into the air­craft.

It is also cur­rent­ly util­is­ing its inter­nal rotor Fan­craft™ tech­nol­o­gy, which is designed to FAA require­ments and utilis­es pow­er­ful duct­ed fans, with no exter­nal wings or rotors. The com­pa­ny says this results in supe­ri­or con­trol, sta­bil­i­ty, speed, safe­ty, noise reduc­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Through sub­sidiary Tac­ti­cal Robot­ics, Urban Aero­nau­tics also focus­es on unmanned VTOLs for mil­i­tary, civ­il appli­ca­tions. Its pri­ma­ry autonomous vehi­cle is the Cor­morant, a car-sized, one-ton sin­gle-engine air­craft.

After more than 300 flights, the Cor­morant has already demon­strat­ed its poten­tial to fly in crowd­ed ter­rain includ­ing urban, wood­ed, and moun­tain­ous areas where it is dif­fi­cult for rotary heli­copters and oth­er air­craft to safe­ly oper­ate.

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