Vertical Aerospace continues to build on its growth with new senior appointments for Latin America and Asia-Pacific regions

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has made two senior appoint­ments, which Stef­fen Bay join­ing as Head of Mar­ket Devel­op­ment for Latin Amer­i­ca (LATAM) and Derek Cheng becom­ing Head of Com­mer­cial, Asia-Pacif­ic.

The appoint­ments build on the company’s con­tin­ued growth and its recent suc­cess­ful list­ing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in Decem­ber 2021.

Bay brings a wealth of com­mer­cial and cor­po­rate expe­ri­ence to Ver­ti­cal from his suc­cess­ful 20 year career across all aspects of the heli­copter ser­vices val­ue chain, his expe­ri­ence hav­ing worked for an OEM, a heli­copter lessor and three dif­fer­ent heli­copter oper­a­tors.

He will be based in Brazil and respon­si­ble for lead­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of busi­ness devel­op­ment activ­i­ties to open-up the LATAM mar­ket fur­ther for Ver­ti­cal. As the for­mer Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of NHV, a world­wide spe­cialised B‑to‑B heli­copter ser­vices busi­ness, Bay will also be Vertical’s expert on the heli­copter mar­ket and oppor­tu­ni­ty.

He has more than 20 years’ expe­ri­ence in the avi­a­tion and finan­cial indus­try, hav­ing worked in senior roles at NHV, Era Heli­copters, now Bris­tow Group and Air­bus in Europe, Asia, North and South Amer­i­ca.

Com­ment­ing on his new appoint­ment, Bay said: “I am excit­ed to be join­ing Ver­ti­cal and help­ing to expand its excep­tion­al part­ner ecosys­tem across Latin Amer­i­ca, where I pre­vi­ous­ly worked for almost 10 years. There is a clear and obvi­ous use case for elec­tric air­craft across the region and I look for­ward to help­ing the busi­ness realise that poten­tial. Hav­ing been the launch­ing cus­tomer of sev­er­al air­craft myself, I am very aware of what we will need to accom­plish togeth­er in the years to come.”

Also join­ing Ver­ti­cal is Derek Cheng, who has exten­sive and wide-rang­ing expe­ri­ence in strat­e­gy, mar­ket­ing, busi­ness devel­op­ment and gov­ern­ment. He holds a pri­vate Pilot License and will be based in Sin­ga­pore, respon­si­ble for lead­ing all com­mer­cial, busi­ness and part­ner­ship devel­op­ment activ­i­ties in the Asia-Pacif­ic region for Ver­ti­cal.

Derek has held sev­er­al senior roles at Air­bus, both in Toulouse and Sin­ga­pore, includ­ing as the Head of Asia-Pacif­ic for Air­bus Urban Mobil­i­ty and as the Head of Asia-Pacif­ic for Gov­ern­ment & Pub­lic Affairs and Strate­gic Part­ner­ships for Air­bus Group. Pri­or to join­ing Air­bus, Derek was the Region­al Direc­tor for Europe at the Sin­ga­pore Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Board, respon­si­ble for indus­try devel­op­ment and the pro­mo­tion of for­eign direct invest­ment.

Cheng added: “I am exhil­a­rat­ed to be join­ing Ver­ti­cal, to grow the busi­ness and part­ner­ship ecosys­tem in Asia-Pacif­ic, to pio­neer zero-emis­sions avi­a­tion and trans­form mobil­i­ty in cities.”

Stef­fen and Derek join Vertical’s grow­ing com­mer­cial team which also includes Nate Isbell, Head of Mar­ket Devel­op­ment, North Amer­i­ca, who was pre­vi­ous­ly at Kit­ty Hawk and Air­bus. The team is led by Eduar­do Dominguez Puer­ta, for­mer­ly CEO of Air­bus’ Urban Air Mobil­i­ty unit.

Ver­ti­cal has a mar­ket-lead­ing pre-order book (by val­ue) for a total of up to 1,350 air­craft from Amer­i­can Air­lines, Avolon, Bris­tow and Ibero­jet, which includes con­di­tion­al pre-order options from Vir­gin Atlantic and Marubeni, and in doing so, is cre­at­ing mul­ti­ple poten­tial near term and action­able routes to mar­ket. 

Puer­ta, who is Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer of Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, said: “We are extreme­ly excit­ed to wel­come Stef­fen and Derek on board. They both bring an incred­i­ble amount of knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence and will help us expand our com­mer­cial reach and secure prox­im­i­ty to our cus­tomers.”

Ver­ti­cal already has a strong pres­ence in both the LATAM and Asia-Pacif­ic regions. Cus­tomers for the VX4, the com­pa­ny’s four-pas­sen­ger eVTOL air­craft, include Brazil’s largest air­line, Gol, for up to 250 air­craft, and in Japan, both Marubeni and JAL, for a com­bined total of up to 300 air­craft.

JAL and Gol’s pre-orders are through Avolon, the world’s sec­ond largest air­craft lessor and a strate­gic investor and part­ner of Vertical’s. Ver­ti­cal has also sold across the heli­copter mar­ket with 25 (and up to 50) pre-orders from Bris­tow Group.