Vertical Aerospace brings in aerospace expert to help realise electric flight vision

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has appoint­ed Eric Sam­son as its Head of Engi­neer­ing, to help the com­pa­ny move towards its vision of elec­tric flight for every­one.

Sam­son was for­mer­ly Vice Pres­i­dent of Engi­neer­ing and Head of the Design Organ­i­sa­tion at Jet Avi­a­tion, and will be respon­si­ble for con­tin­u­ing to build a world-class engi­neer­ing and design organ­i­sa­tion.

He will work close­ly with Ver­ti­cal Aero­space’s new­ly appoint­ed Chief Engi­neer, Tim Williams, and Mike Gas­coyne, CTO, by head­ing up the engi­neer­ing func­tion to pre­pare the way for the com­pa­ny’s Design Organ­i­sa­tion Approval (DOA), and to devel­op the tech­nolo­gies and capa­bil­i­ties that it needs to devel­op the future air­craft.

Sam­son said: “I am hon­oured to join Ver­ti­cal Aero­space and to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be part of the next chap­ter of avi­a­tion his­to­ry. I am also excit­ed to work along­side a young and self-dri­ven world-class organ­i­sa­tion which is com­mit­ted to rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing the way peo­ple fly and bring car­bon-free and on-demand trav­el to life.

“While the chal­lenges are sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent than those on well-known tra­di­tion­al air­craft, I am look­ing for­ward to build­ing an inno­v­a­tive engi­neer­ing and Design Organ­i­sa­tion that will chal­lenge the sta­tus quo and cer­ti­fy the safest and most reli­able urban air mobil­i­ty expe­ri­ence.”

With more than 29 years’ expe­ri­ence, Sam­son has a proven track record hold­ing var­i­ous tech­ni­cal and lead­er­ship roles through­out his career. At Gulf­stream Aero­space, he held var­i­ous roles from Struc­tur­al Design Engi­neer to Project Engi­neer­ing Man­ag­er, par­tic­i­pat­ing in five major pro­grams (G550, G450, G650, G500 & G600).

He also led an incred­i­bly inno­v­a­tive and tal­ent­ed air­frame design and stress team in car­ry­ing out the devel­op­ment, first flight and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Gulf­stream G650, redefin­ing the busi­ness trav­el indus­try. He also deliv­ered the qui­etest and light­est high-end air­craft inte­ri­ors and most advanced cab­in sys­tems STCs for Head of States and VVIP cus­tomers.

More recent­ly, as VP of Engi­neer­ing and Head of the Design Organ­i­sa­tion at Jet Avi­a­tion, Sam­son was respon­si­ble for reor­gan­is­ing the engi­neer­ing struc­ture, imple­ment­ing a grow­ing range of engi­neer­ing ser­vices and increas­ing EASA scope of approval.

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space is con­tin­u­ing to prove itself as a glob­al pio­neer in sus­tain­able avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies. It is one of only a hand­ful of com­pa­nies to have flown and flight test­ed two full-scale all-elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (eVTOL) pro­to­types with UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty approval.

The lat­est, Ser­aph, can car­ry 250kg and reach speeds of 80km/h. Devel­op­ment of Vertical’s next gen­er­a­tion eVTOL is well under­way and will soon be made pub­lic. At cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, the air­craft will be able to set one pilot and four pas­sen­gers, and trav­el up to 100 miles at speeds of 150mph. Ver­ti­cal is tar­get­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and ini­tial ser­vice oper­a­tion in 2024.

Michael Cer­ven­ka, CEO of Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, added: “I am absolute­ly delight­ed to wel­come Eric Sam­son to Ver­ti­cal. Eric brings invalu­able exper­tise as an exist­ing EASA Design Organ­i­sa­tion Approval hold­er with over 29 years’ aero­space expe­ri­ence in lead­ing cross-func­tion­al teams in the Design, Devel­op­ment, Test and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of high-per­for­mance air­craft.

“He brings a tremen­dous pedi­gree in suc­cess­ful­ly lead­ing and trans­form­ing inno­v­a­tive, large and diverse air­craft engi­neer­ing func­tions. With Eric join­ing, along­side Tim Williams, our recent­ly appoint­ed Chief Engi­neer, and Mike Gas­coyne, Vertical’s CTO and For­mu­la 1 vet­er­an, we have assem­bled a tru­ly for­mi­da­ble and diverse engi­neer­ing exec team to help realise our excit­ing endeav­our in devel­op­ing world lead­ing sus­tain­able air­craft.”