Vertical Flight Society continues to achieve record growth as it reaches 150 corporate members

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety con­tin­ues to record con­tin­ued growth, with 15 com­pa­nies join­ing as mem­bers in the first quar­ter of 2021, bring­ing the total num­ber to 150.

This growth — pro­pelled large­ly by the expan­sion of eVTOL air­craft devel­op­ments around the world — also rep­re­sents a 50 per cent increase since Jan­u­ary 2018, when the VFS sur­passed 100 mem­bers, and a 100 per cent increase over the past five years. 

New com­pa­nies join­ing the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety as an Asso­ciate class are BAAZ GmbH, Cypress Inter­na­tion­al, Nation­al Renew­able Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry, Olsen Actu­a­tors, Sky­Drive and SMG Con­sult­ing.

The remain­ing new mem­bers, which have joined as Small Busi­ness class, are Cald­well Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Law, Crown Con­sult­ing, ENSCO Avion­ics, Garudeus Avi­a­tion, Intel­li­gent Ener­gy, Intel­lisense Sys­tems, Launch­Point Elec­tric Propul­sion Sys­tem, Ptero­Dy­nam­ics, Real-Time Inno­va­tions and Urbi­neer.

Mike Hirschberg, VFS Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, said: “Despite the pan­dem­ic, inter­est and invest­ment in the eVTOL indus­try has accel­er­at­ed, rep­re­sent­ing one of the few bright spots in what has been a very chal­leng­ing time for most of the civ­il avi­a­tion indus­try. VFS has been lead­ing efforts to advance elec­tric ver­ti­cal flight for the past sev­en years and has helped cre­ate the large tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ty across the eVTOL ecosys­tem.”

In addi­tion, the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety has now reached 6,100 indi­vid­ual mem­bers as of April 1st, 2021. This rep­re­sents a full recov­ery from a loss of 400 mem­bers at the begin­ning of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic and is the high­est num­ber of (cur­rent) mem­bers ever. Com­pared to three years ago, this is a 15 per cent net increase in  since Jan­u­ary 2018, when VFS had 5,300 mem­bers.

This growth in mem­bers is the result of the exten­sive sup­port that VFS pro­vides to the entire ver­ti­cal flight indus­try, includ­ing tech­ni­cal resources, tal­ent acqui­si­tion, edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties and net­work­ing. 

In addi­tion to the tra­di­tion­al core mem­bers from the glob­al rotor­craft indus­try, the major­i­ty of the growth in mem­bers is due to the proac­tive sup­port efforts and resources that VFS has pro­vid­ed to the eVTOL indus­try, which is now receiv­ing bil­lions of dol­lars of invest­ment. Sub­stan­tial invest­ments in next gen­er­a­tion mil­i­tary and civ­il advanced rotor­craft have also inten­si­fied an indus­try-wide demand for top tal­ent and train­ing.

Key eVTOL resources include the defin­i­tive World eVTOL Air­craft Direc­to­ry — with 435 air­craft cur­rent­ly list­ed — on the VFS eVTOL.news web­site, which also includes 470 eVTOL news sto­ries, includ­ing 240 in-depth arti­cles from the Society’s Ver­ti­flite mag­a­zine, the lead­ing peri­od­i­cal on eVTOL and rotor­craft devel­op­ments.

VFS has been at the fore­front of what it calls the “Elec­tric VTOL Rev­o­lu­tion” since 2014 when it held the world’s first meet­ing of the eVTOL devel­op­ment com­mu­ni­ty. This year’s— the world’s largest and longest-run­ning event focus­ing on the incred­i­ble promise, progress and chal­lenges of eVTOL air­craft — was held suc­cess­ful­ly, with 100 speak­ers and 600 atten­dees. 

Last year, at the begin­ning of the glob­al pan­dem­ic, VFS dra­mat­i­cal­ly increased its online edu­ca­tion­al offer­ings. Since then, it has held more than 60 sep­a­rate webi­na­rs and work­shops, as well as sev­er­al major online con­fer­ences, and three online short cours­es.

The Society’s  now fea­tures some 375 videos, cov­er­ing hun­dreds of hours of lec­tures, meet­ings and inter­views, plus cur­rent and his­tor­i­cal flight footage.

Hirschberg added: “These past 12 months have seen amaz­ing progress in eVTOL devel­op­ments. Our mem­bers in indus­try, acad­e­mia and gov­ern­ment agen­cies around the world have been tack­ling the tough­est chal­lenges in ver­ti­cal flight, prov­ing out the promise of this new approach to air mobil­i­ty.”

VFS con­tin­ues to pro­vide foun­da­tion­al sup­port, includ­ing increased online capa­bil­i­ties and net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in 2021, includ­ing in-per­son events again as soon as pos­si­ble. Sev­er­al impor­tant vir­tu­al and in-per­son events are planned in the com­ing months at

Descrip­tions of each com­pa­ny, includ­ing links to web­sites and con­tact infor­ma­tion, are found in the. For more infor­ma­tion on the ben­e­fits and rates for cor­po­rate mem­ber­ship, vis­it itspage.