Vertical Aerospace appoints Leonardo’s David King as Chief Engineer

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has fur­ther strength­ened its exec­u­tive lead­er­ship team with the appoint­ment of David King as Chief Engi­neer. He joins in Feb­ru­ary 2023 and will be respon­si­ble for the tech­ni­cal devel­op­ment and over­all per­for­mance of the Vertical’s VX4 elec­tric air­craft, super­vis­ing every phase of the project from start to com­ple­tion.

King pre­vi­ous­ly spent sev­en years as Chief Engi­neer on the AW609 VTOL air­craft devel­oped by tier-one aero­space com­pa­ny Leonar­do, where he built and man­aged a new engi­neer­ing organ­i­sa­tion at Leonar­do Helicopter’s US sub­sidiary to mod­ernise its design, ini­ti­ate pro­duc­tion, and advance FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the world’s first com­mer­cial tiltro­tor.

The AW609 is set to be the first new cat­e­go­ry air­craft to be cer­ti­fied in over 50 years, hav­ing demon­strat­ed ‘unmatched’ ver­ti­cal lift capa­bil­i­ty for the com­mer­cial mar­ket, which will be crit­i­cal as he trans­fers this exper­tise to the VX4.

King has also held senior roles at both Leonar­do and air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er Bell Air­craft, where he was Chief Engi­neer and launched Bell’s newest com­mer­cial heli­copter design and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion project, the Bell 525 Relent­less.

He has expe­ri­ence of devel­op­ing and val­i­dat­ing inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies for VTOL air­craft with tilt­ing rotor sys­tems and wing-borne cruise dat­ing back to his inte­grat­ed prod­uct team lead­er­ship role in devel­op­ing the rev­o­lu­tion­ary Bell-Boe­ing V‑22 Osprey Tiltro­tor.

He has exten­sive glob­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion expe­ri­ence that he will bring to bear on the VX4, span­ning the US’ Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA), Trans­port Cana­da, the UK’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA), Italy’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (ENAC) and the French Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (DGAC).

Ver­ti­cal founder and CEO Stephen Fitz­patrick com­ment­ed: “David’s unpar­al­leled expe­ri­ence in the design and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of VTOL air­craft will pro­pel us for­ward on the next stage of our mis­sion to trans­form the way we trav­el.”

King added: “From my time at Leonar­do, I have already seen first-hand the pio­neer­ing work Ver­ti­cal is doing. The prag­mat­ic approach it has tak­en with the design and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the VX4 will pave the way to suc­cess and I am delight­ed to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work along­side the team in its efforts to rev­o­lu­tionise air trav­el.”

In Sep­tem­ber, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space reached a mile­stone for its eVTOL VX4 devel­op­ment, when a pilot­ed pro­to­type first became air­borne dur­ing a flight tri­al, the first British com­pa­ny in 20 years to lift off with a new air­craft.

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space con­ducts ini­tial air­borne VX4 tri­al, first British com­pa­ny in 20 years to lift off with new air­craft

Two weeks pre­vi­ous­ly, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space expand­ed its deploy­ment of Das­sault Sys­tèmes’ 3DExperience plat­form to sup­port its flight test­ing and devel­op­ment pro­gramme for its VX4 elec­tric air­craft.

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space part­ners with Das­sault Sys­tèmes to Accel­er­ate VX4 Flight Test­ing and Devel­op­ment