• 03 Nov 2024 11:11 PM
• 0

Q&A with Stuart Simpson, CEO, Vertical Aerospace

By Alex Scerri
Vertiflite, Nov/Dec 2024

In September, Vertical Aerospace announced the first half-year 2024 financial results and the completion of Phase 1 of the piloted flight test program. With the company’s share value having been below the USD $1 benchmark for some months, the company also did a 1-for-10 reverse split stock to regain compliance in the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Vertiflite spoke to Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Stuart Simpson where, in addition to the above, we discussed the rationale behind the company’s philosophy of putting a pilot in the aircraft early in the flight test program. Simpson took over as CEO from founder and CEO Stephen Fitzpatrick in May, after serving as chief financial officer (CFO) since September 2023. He was previously the CFO of internet-security company Avast Antivirus (acquired by Norton LifeLock in 2021).

Note: This is a slightly longer version of the article that appeared in the print and PDF version in the Nov/Dec 2024 issue of Vertiflite.

Vertiflite: Stuart, what is the path that brought you to Vertical Aerospace?

Simpson: My background is in automotive, logistics and technology in large, global businesses, but always with a focus on engineering. This is the third founder-led business where I have worked very closely with the founder. I was aware of the work Vertical Aerospace was doing 18 months to two years before I joined, and I wasn’t sure that this would work. However, since that time I saw an amazing evolution of the industry, and Vertical Aerospace specifically, with the quality of the team, where I got to meet the board and frontline management team and then also saw the aircraft flying last year. That was when I decided this is not a fantasy anymore, this is going to happen. I spoke to many analysts and bankers in the sector and the feedback I got was that Vertical Aerospace really knew what they were doing. I decided to join and knew it would be fantastic to work with Stephen Fitzpatrick. Ten, 20 years down the line, I will be able to look back and [tell] my kids that I was part of this first step in advanced air mobility (AAM) and decarbonizing aviation, which would be an amazing legacy for me, personally, but also a phenomenal opportunity for the UK.

Vertiflite: How is your current prototype similar, and how is it different from the earlier iteration?

Simpson: When I first joined Vertical Aerospace and saw the aircraft being tested at that time, it was very much a prototype. It flew, and it was amazing, but it was a prototype. This second generation is completely different. While the first aircraft only had a minimal [number] of aerospace qualified components, 60% of the current aircraft’s parts are now from established global leader aerospace suppliers, such as Honeywell, GKN Aerospace and Leonardo. On top of that, we’ve got our own battery packs. We buy the cells from Molicel and package them and do all the battery management software in-house. Another thing we design ourselves are the propellers and these are now on their second generation. The aircraft is an immaculate piece of engineering; it looks fantastic. You just get this aura of quality. This is definitely where the production aircraft is going.

Vertiflite: Was there any update on the specifications — four passengers and pilot, 150-mph (240-km/h) cruise speed, and 100-mile (160-km) range?

Simpson: Those are still our targets. The one thing that I would add is that it is passengers plus luggage. It is one of the key differentiating factors that we have. It will not be just hopping around London with a small briefcase, but it will be passengers stepping off their transatlantic flight with a practical amount of luggage that a typical business traveler would carry, that our aircraft will take all together to their destination. Although we haven’t shared the payload figures yet, it will definitely be good for four passengers and luggage.

Vertiflite: You have completed Phase 1 of your flight test program. What is your planned timeline for Phases 2–4?

Simpson: Completing Phase 1 in the UK is quite the achievement. Doing the same thing across the Atlantic, the regulatory burden would be much lower but, in our case, we have a joint liability with the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) with the main job being to keep the pilot safe. To complete this piloted phase required a staggering amount of documentation. We had to prove to ourselves, not least myself as CEO who has overall responsibility for safety and of course the CAA, that the pilot and the rest of the team would be safe. Each phase is like a mini, self-contained certification package. We were proud and pleased that the aircraft performed exactly as expected.

Moving to Phase 2, which will be piloted thrust-borne [untethered] flight, I cannot give you hard dates, but it will be in the next couple of months. Only a handful of developers have achieved this step with a pilot on board. We also went directly to testing a full-scale prototype and fairly quickly to piloted because we felt that the engineering loops were quicker. Once Phase 2 is completed, we will be taking the time to carefully study the data to then proceed to the next two phases, wing-borne flight and piloted transition. The logic was, and I won’t take credit for this because it was decided before my time, that if we build the right full-scale model in the simulator and focus on safety, with the assumption that you will have a pilot early on in the flight test program, you drive the engineering rigor to a point where you make huge strides in learning out of necessity to keep the pilot safe. Of course, we already had a very extensive powered ground testing program, so it was not a leap into the unknown.

Vertiflite: Do you plan to fly the VX4 at any public events to increase exposure?

Simpson: I would love to take the aircraft and fly it all over the place. The reality is that our main target is to get the aircraft certified. The distraction of taking the aircraft out of the flight test program to show it somewhere could be hugely time consuming. We will start doing some of this in the future as part of the Advanced Mobility Ecosystem Consortium [AMEC, aiming to demonstrate the commercial and operational viability of AAM in the UK], but at the moment both the engineering team and I are laser focused on progressing through the piloted test flight program. Once we have more aircraft available, then of course we can consider taking one on the road because I agree it is a good tool to get the public, governments, investors and the various regulating bodies accustomed to seeing these aircraft and understand their potential. We were excited to see one of our American competitors fly their aircraft in Manhattan as we want everyone to win, and we would certainly take part in that kind of event once we have the capacity.

Vertiflite: What is your current target date for certification?

Simpson: Because we are a public company, we have to update the market if we change the plan for this. At the minute we are still targeting the end of 2026. We have a route to this; it is challenging, as it is for all our competitors, but that’s the target date we are still holding to.

Vertiflite: Will certification be seamless with the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) considering you are under the CAA?

Simpson: There are two parts to that. Firstly, we have a fantastic relationship with our home regulator, and I understand how important this is as all the industries I come from were also highly regulated. I speak frequently to the  [UK CAA] Chairman and the Chief Executive, so there is a very good understanding at the highest levels. At a working level, the CAA have a Project Certification Manager (PCM) that approves the aircraft and then have the panels underneath. We’ve got a great process up and running because our mutually embedded leads are continuously talking together. I think it’s good for us, good for the CAA and good for EASA. I feel we are best positioned in Europe to bring a credible product forward sooner than anyone else, so actually it benefits everybody.

Vertiflite: Do you plan to certify under US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) at a later stage or concurrently?

Simpson: We are very clear that when we certify with the CAA, that currently opens 29 markets in Europe because of the harmonization with EASA. This is currently the highest global standard. We can then do a relatively quick paperwork exercise to certify with the FAA. So, it would not be concurrent, but it would be a relatively quick process. It’s not only the FAA; due to the high CAA and EASA standard, we can then go to Brazil, Japan, Korea, etc. Unless something changes, that would be our plan.

Vertiflite: With Rolls-Royce exiting the electric propulsion business, have you sourced an alternative supplier for the electric propulsion units (EPUs)?

Simpson: It’s a good question. Rolls-Royce were very candid that they wanted to shut down their electric aviation division. They were trying to sell it but could not find a buyer. We had been working hand in glove with them and they are brilliant to work with, but we weren’t quite getting to where we needed for the production line. They were never on the aircraft that’s flying now, as we already had a much faster, lower cost, lower weight, higher performance EPU supplier partner that we were working with. We probably have six or seven companies or consortiums around the world that we know can do what we are looking for in terms of cost, weight and performance for the EPU. We aren’t sharing the name of the EPU supplier for the current aircraft for the flight test phase as they are in a tender process with us, but they are doing a great job, especially considering that the aircraft is heavier than the production aircraft.

Vertiflite: Can you elaborate on the agreement with the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) as a similar conduit to funding has been available to US airframers through collaboration with military services?

Simpson: You’re right, the amount of money available to the industrial military complex in the US is considerable. Being able to access that as a native US business would be a big advantage. In terms of the UK and Europe, it’s kind of a different scale, but we are signed up to the UK MOD’s Uncrewed Air Systems Heavy Lift Challenge, which opens access to just under £100M (USD $133.7M), not a trivial amount of money for a company like us. There are several potential military use cases such as non-weaponized cargo and logistics with the advantage of being a quiet and maneuverable platform. We will participate on other tenders that will come along and see what kind of research and development (R&D) we can leverage from them.

Vertiflite: The journey planner in your website indicates considerable time savings on many popular routes, such as Battersea (London) heliport to Heathrow airport in eight minutes. Do these consider current helicopter visual flight rules (VFR) routes?

Simpson: If I can talk specifically about the Heathrow airport to London route, it is absolutely following the current VFR helicopter routes. The reason the numbers are so good is probably twofold. One is that compared to mainstream helicopters, the power up and starting procedures until you are ready to lift off are much quicker. Secondly, it is down to the speed of the aircraft, where, of course, we assume our maximum speed, but we are comfortable we can get to that. They are realistic numbers which plus or minus a few minutes is what we expect in real-world operations. 

We hold Pioneer’s Events twice a year, where our customers send senior people over to us for three or four days and have very open discussions between themselves and with us about what the aircraft needs to do, what the day-to-day passenger handling procedures are going to look like, what’s the expected turnaround time, what kind of luggage will the aircraft carry, etc. We take that feedback into our engineering side, but we also work with them to model our routes. We have modeled nearly 1,600 routes in detail around the world together with our customers, right down to cost per mile, turnaround time, etc. Therefore, our customers know exactly what infrastructure they need, have a full understanding of the regulatory environment, and know all the costs that they need to integrate into the ticket prices.

We will not operate the aircraft ourselves, but for example, here in the UK, we are working extraordinarily closely with the Future Flight Challenge consortium.... There is tremendous energy to put London front and center again as a global financial market. That kind of thinking is going on and recognizes that AAM is a potential gamechanger. The possible time savings of having an air transportation system that can access the inner city is tremendous, in London and beyond.

Vertiflite: How would you describe your performance and that of other AAM players in the stock market and what do you think is needed to get more retail investors on board eVTOL stocks?

Simpson: If you look at the wider AAM market, anyone that does any flying is brilliant as everyone benefits. This helps the retail investor understand that this is about to be a reality within our grasp. For Vertical Aerospace, we have a tiny amount of public float as most of the stock is with our owner and founder and a couple of other large investors. With just a small fraction of public float, it makes the price quite volatile. What I’d love to see happening in the next two years is all of the AAM ecosystem [taking] big steps in flying, certification, etc., at which point I think the retail investors will flow in, as at the minute we are a bit of an unknown.

To add some background, Vertical Aerospace did not have a chief financial officer (CFO) for nearly three years. The job of the CFO is to be out there, telling our story and driving engagement. That didn’t happen, but now we are building a team that will be doing just that.

Vertiflite: Can you briefly explain what is the reverse stock split ratio implementation?

Simpson: On the NYSE [New York Stock Exchange] where we are listed, you need to maintain a stock price above $1, while for example in the UK it could be down to one penny. As our stock price went below that threshold, we did a reverse share split, which turned every ten shares into one. It’s very common for pre-revenue businesses to go through this cycle where there is a lot of initial excitement, but you are dealing with the challenges of novel technology — it is a well-trodden path.

Vertiflite: As a closing comment, what is your vision for the future of AAM?

Simpson: Anything we can do to get the sector known to as wide [an audience] as possible is positive. I genuinely want all our competitors to succeed. I had many offers for similar jobs at the time I was joining Vertical Aerospace, but I passionately believe that this is as big a step change in how humans travel [as] we have had for a long time. These aircraft are going to be safe, clean, silent and will be relatively cheap within a few years. The ability to be part of that is just phenomenal and the market demand is big, especially in the mega cities. It’s going to be an incredible five to ten years to certify and industrialize these aircraft.

About the Author

Alex Scerri started his aviation career in 1994 flying for Air Malta. He joined Emirates in 2006, flying several aircraft types, including the Airbus A380 as captain, and worked in the fleet technical office. He is currently flying the A350 for French Bee in Paris. He has been writing on AAM and aviation safety since 2020, including for Vertical Magazine.