“Vertical Aerospace Appoints Patrick Ky, Former EASA Executive Director, to Company’s Board” 

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, the UKs lead­ing eVTOL Air­craft com­pa­ny, recent­ly announced the appoint­ment of Patrick Ky to its Board of Direc­tors, reports a press release.

Giv­en Ky’s 10 year expe­ri­ence as Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of EASA (Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency), this is a strong choice.

The release explains, “Under his lead­er­ship, EASA devel­oped the world’s first com­pre­hen­sive reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for eVTOL air­craft, SC-VTOL, pub­lished in 2019, cre­at­ing a path­way for the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of elec­tric flight. He also set new safe­ty stan­dards for air­craft such as the Boe­ing 777X and Air­bus A321XLR and over­saw the safe return to ser­vice of the 737 MAX.” 

Pri­or to EASA, Ky was Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Sin­gle Euro­pean Sky Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment Research (SESAR) Joint Under­tak­ing, Europe’s air traf­fic man­age­ment mod­erni­sa­tion pro­gram. He has also held senior lead­er­ship roles at Euro­con­trol and in the French Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (DGAC). 

Present­ly, Ky is CEO of the Inter­na­tion­al Cen­tre for Avi­a­tion Inno­va­tion (ICAI), a glob­al hub bring­ing togeth­er gov­ern­ments, indus­try and research insti­tu­tions to co-devel­op inno­v­a­tive solu­tions for the future of air trav­el.

He com­ment­ed, “Hav­ing worked close­ly with indus­try and reg­u­la­tors world­wide on devel­op­ing the stan­dards for this new eVTOL gen­er­a­tion of air­craft, I believe Ver­ti­cal is unique­ly posi­tioned to lead the sec­tor through cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and into safe, sus­tain­able com­mer­cial oper­a­tions.” 

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space VX4

Domh­nal Slat­tery, Chair­man at Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, added, “Patrick’s unpar­al­leled exper­tise and lead­er­ship at EASA will be invalu­able as Ver­ti­cal advances its cer­ti­fi­able air­craft pro­gramme, cre­at­ing the most exportable air­craft on the mar­ket.” 

Ky’s con­tri­bu­tions to avi­a­tion have earned him numer­ous acco­lades, includ­ing The Glen A. Gilbert Memo­r­i­al Award in 2013 and Avi­a­tion Week’s Philip J. Klass Life­time Achieve­ment Award for his last­ing con­tri­bu­tions to avi­a­tion safe­ty in 2025. 

Ver­ti­cal is tar­get­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its VX4 air­craft in 2028, con­cur­rent­ly with the CAA and EASA, meet­ing the high­est safe­ty and reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dards for eVTOLs glob­al­ly. 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://vertical-aerospace.com/

(Top image: Patrick Ky)

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