Vertical Flight Society continues to record growth and now exceeds 160 members, a 19 per cent increase

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety has said that the explo­sive growth of the world’s eVTOL air­craft mar­ket, plus sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments in mil­i­tary and civ­il rotor­craft, have con­tin­ued to expand its mem­ber­ship.  

As of Jan­u­ary 1st, a total of 163 com­pa­nies are now mem­bers of the soci­ety, which is a net 19 per cent growth from a year ago and a dou­bling over the past five years. The num­ber of indi­vid­ual mem­bers has also grown to more than 6,300 — a net increase of near­ly 10 per cent (550 indi­vid­u­als) over the past 12 months and a 30 per cent growth (1,400 indi­vid­u­als) over the past five years.

Much of this growth is due to the exten­sive sup­port efforts and resources that VFS pro­vides to the ver­ti­cal flight indus­try, includ­ing tech­ni­cal resources, tal­ent acqui­si­tion, edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties and net­work­ing. 

Mike Hirschberg, Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, said: “This past year saw steady tech­ni­cal progress and eye-pop­ping finan­cial invest­ments in the lead­ing eVTOL devel­op­ers. VFS had esti­mat­ed $4.5 bil­lion of invest­ments in eVTOL com­pa­nies in 2010–2020. How­ev­er, last year saw sev­er­al addi­tion­al devel­op­ers go pub­lic and/or attract size­able pri­vate invest­ments; the total addi­tion­al glob­al esti­mate in 2021 alone was around $6 bil­lion.

The 36 new com­pa­nies that joined VFS dur­ing 2021 include Archer, the Com­mu­ni­ty Air Mobil­i­ty Ini­tia­tive (CAMI), Elroy Air, Crown Con­sult­ing, Elec­tric Pow­er Sys­tems, Mobius.energy, Ohio Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion, SMG Con­sult­ing, Sky­Drive, TruWeath­er Solu­tions and UP.Partners

These new cor­po­rate mem­bers include com­pa­nies, non-prof­its and gov­ern­ment agen­cies from around the world who are sup­port­ing all aspects of ver­ti­cal flight. In addi­tion to civ­il and mil­i­tary rotor­craft devel­op­ments, such as the US Army’s Future Ver­ti­cal Lift (FVL) pro­gram, eVTOL devel­op­ments increased marked­ly in 2021.  

As of today, the Soci­ety has cat­a­loged over 590 dif­fer­ent elec­tric VTOL con­cepts from near­ly 350 com­pa­nies and inno­va­tors on its author­i­ta­tive World eVTOL Air­craft Direc­to­ry at www.evtol.news.

When VFS launched the site in April 2017, only a dozen eVTOL pro­grammes were under devel­op­ment. Near­ly 200 new designs were added in 2021 alone. The site cur­rent­ly also hosts more than 600 eVTOL news sto­ries, includ­ing some 270 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.

Now, the Society’s 9th Annu­al Elec­tric VTOL Sym­po­sium — being held from Jan­u­ary 25th to 27th in-per­son in San Jose, Cal­i­for­nia, and also vir­tu­al­ly, as part of the VFS Trans­for­ma­tive Ver­ti­cal Flight (TVF) Tech­ni­cal Meet­ing — con­tin­ues as the world’s largest and longest-run­ning event focus­ing on the incred­i­ble promise, progress and chal­lenges of eVTOL air­craft.

As in pre­vi­ous years, the annu­al sym­po­sium will present the lat­est insights, trends and progress in eVTOL devel­op­ments. This month’s sym­po­sium fea­tures ple­nary pre­sen­ta­tions by gov­ern­ment lead­ers from NASA, the US Army, US Air Force and the FAA, as well as indus­try talks from Siko­rsky, Hyundai’s Super­nal, Lil­i­um and Wisk.

More than 50 addi­tion­al VIP speak­ers and pan­el­lists in the sym­po­sium cov­er impor­tant top­ics regard­ing eVTOL, while more than 60 tech­ni­cal papers on rotor­craft aero­me­chan­ics, eVTOL, the Mars Heli­copter, advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) will be pre­sent­ed. Details are avail­able at . This is a hybrid event with a vir­tu­al con­nec­tion for glob­al ben­e­fit. 

When VFS launched the first TVF meet­ing in 2014, the idea of elec­tric VTOL air­craft was greet­ed with wide­spread scep­ti­cism, but grow­ing tech­ni­cal progress, flight demon­stra­tions, gov­ern­ment val­i­da­tion and pri­vate invest­ment have helped reverse pub­lic per­cep­tion. It is now recog­nised that the ver­ti­cal flight mar­ket is poised for sig­nif­i­cant expan­sion over the next few years as eVTOL air­craft enter ser­vice that can have high­er per­for­mance than con­ven­tion­al heli­copters for cer­tain mis­sions, as well as low­er oper­at­ing costs and low­er noise. 

VFS was found­ed as the Amer­i­can Heli­copter Soci­ety in 1943 by the vision­ar­ies of the ear­ly heli­copter indus­try, who believed that tech­no­log­i­cal coop­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion were essen­tial to sup­port this new type of air­craft. Today, his­to­ry is repeat­ing itself, with VFS play­ing a sim­i­lar role help­ing to advance today’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary eVTOL air­craft.

VFS holds the largest and longest-run­ning ver­ti­cal flight tech­ni­cal con­fer­ence in the world, which this year will be its 78th Annu­al Forum & Tech­nol­o­gy Dis­play from May 10th-12th, 2022, in Ft. Worth, Texas, USA.