Vertical Aerospace Appoints Former Airbus Executive Marc Fontaine to Board

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has appoint­ed Marc Fontaine, chief exec­u­tive of Helsing’s French enti­ty and a for­mer Air­bus dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion exec­u­tive, to its board of direc­tors as the UK eVTOL devel­op­er con­tin­ues prepa­ra­tions for the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of its Valo air­craft.

Marc brings more than 20 years of expe­ri­ence at Air­bus, where he held roles span­ning com­mer­cial air­craft, defence and space, and heli­copters. As Air­bus’ dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion offi­cer, he led a team of around 2,000 peo­ple and launched Sky­wise, the company’s avi­a­tion data plat­form. His pre­vi­ous posi­tions includ­ed com­pa­ny sec­re­tary, chief of staff to the chief exec­u­tive, and roles in busi­ness devel­op­ment and merg­ers and acqui­si­tions.

He cur­rent­ly leads Hels­ing SAS, the French arm of Euro­pean defence tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Hels­ing, which spe­cialis­es in mil­i­tary arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.

Fontaine is the third senior aero­space and defence exec­u­tive to join Vertical’s board in recent weeks. For­mer Air­bus Com­mer­cial Air­craft chief exec­u­tive Fab­rice Brégi­er was appoint­ed board chair, while Clyde Wolt­man, for­mer­ly chief exec­u­tive of Leonar­do Heli­copters’ US busi­ness, also joined as a direc­tor.

The appoint­ments come as Ver­ti­cal reviews its strate­gic options. In Sep­tem­ber, the com­pa­ny retained invest­ment bank Jef­feries LLC as finan­cial advis­er to assess poten­tial strate­gic and finan­cial part­ner­ships to sup­port its next stage of devel­op­ment.

Ver­ti­cal is devel­op­ing Valo, a pilot­ed elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing air­craft designed to car­ry four pas­sen­gers. The com­pa­ny is also work­ing on a hybrid-elec­tric vari­ant intend­ed to pro­vide greater range and mis­sion flex­i­bil­i­ty, includ­ing poten­tial defence and oth­er dual-use appli­ca­tions.

Fontaine said that secur­ing fund­ing for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion would be a pri­or­i­ty. Ver­ti­cal has said Valo is being devel­oped to meet the applic­a­ble safe­ty require­ments for its air­craft cat­e­go­ry, although cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and entry into com­mer­cial ser­vice remain ahead.

The com­pa­ny reports approx­i­mate­ly 1,500 pre-orders for Valo, with prospec­tive cus­tomers across four con­ti­nents, includ­ing Amer­i­can Air­lines, Avolon, Bris­tow, GOL and Japan Air­lines. Some of these cus­tomer oblig­a­tions are expect­ed to be ful­filled through third-par­ty agree­ments.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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