Vertical Flight Society continues record growth with over 185 corporate members

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS) reports today that the explo­sive growth of the world’s eVTOL air­craft, plus sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments in mil­i­tary and civ­il rotor­craft, have con­tin­ued to expand its mem­ber­ship.

As of 31 March 2023, a total of 186 com­pa­nies are mem­bers of VFS, a 7.5 per­cent net growth of 13 com­pa­nies from a year ago, and near­ly 60 com­pa­nies over the past three years. VFS has near­ly 6,500 indi­vid­ual mem­bers, a net increase of near­ly 8% to 460 indi­vid­u­als since before the pan­dem­ic and a 20% growth to 1,050 indi­vid­u­als over the past five years.

“With the US Army pro­ceed­ing towards devel­op­ment of its Future Long Range Assault Air­craft (FLRAA) civ­il heli­copter advance­ments, eVTOL air­craft in the US, Europe and Asia are mak­ing impres­sive progress towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion,” said VFS Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Mike Hirschberg.”

“For more than 80 years, VFS has been instru­men­tal in bring­ing togeth­er our mem­bers in acad­e­mia and gov­ern­ment agen­cies around the world to advance ver­ti­cal flight.”

Ten new orga­ni­za­tions joined VFS dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2023, includ­ing AFWERX, AIR, ARC Aerosys­tems, Elroy Air, GKN Aero­space, Inge­ni­um Aero­space, Intel­lisense Sys­tems, KULR Tech­nol­o­gy Group, Near Earth Auton­o­my and ZeroAvia.

Descrip­tions of each orga­ni­za­tion, includ­ing links to their web­sites, are found in the VFS Cor­po­rate Mem­ber Direc­to­ry. VFS holds the largest and longest run­ning ver­ti­cal flight tech­ni­cal con­fer­ence in the world. This year’s 79th Annu­al Forum & Tech­nol­o­gy Dis­play is on May 16–18, 2023, in West Palm Beach, Flori­da, USA.

More than 250 tech­ni­cal paper pre­sen­ta­tions, 50 VIP pre­sen­ta­tions from lead­ers in gov­ern­ment and indus­try, and 60+ tech­nol­o­gy exhibitors make it the only con­fer­ence where exec­u­tives meet with sup­pli­ers, mil­i­tary lead­ers and the ver­ti­cal flight tech­ni­cal base, and learn from indus­try, acad­e­mia and gov­ern­ment researchers.

Since 2014, VFS has held the world’s first meet­ing of the nascent eVTOL com­mu­ni­ty, with the annu­al Elec­tric VTOL Sym­po­sium being the largest and longest run­ning eVTOL con­fer­ence in the world, and now attracts more than 500 atten­dees.

As of today, VFS has cat­a­logued 800 dif­fer­ent elec­tric VTOL con­cepts from more than 350 com­pa­nies and inno­va­tors on its author­i­ta­tive World eVTOL Air­craft Direc­to­ry at www.evtol.news. The site also hosts some 800 eVTOL news sto­ries, includ­ing more than 325 in-depth arti­cles from the Society’s Ver­ti­flite mag­a­zine, the lead­ing peri­od­i­cal on eVTOL and rotor­craft devel­op­ments.