What made you decide to skip the ‘start-small’ urban air taxi model and go straight for a 40-seat aircraft?

“I’ve always been drawn to scaling solutions bigger, wider, and faster. I’m autistic, and one thing I know for certain is that with the right people around the table, any scale-up is achievable. With our 40-seat eVTOL, we scaled immediately – a 10x leap in payload and range compared to a 4-seat air taxi: 4,500kg instead of 450kg, and 600 miles instead of 60. Sometimes you don’t need to reinvent the wheel – you just need to look at it from the right angle.

“Today we’re seeing many of the smaller players trying to retrofit their way up in payload or range, or even pivoting back to STOL or CTOL. We started where they’re trying to end up, hybrid, larger payload and wider range.”

Can you explain the tandem tilt-wing design and how it enables the LA-44’s performance?

“The logic is actually quite simple, and it’s an approach militaries have experimented with in different forms in the past. Picture a small 40-seat regional airplane in front of you, with a conventional wing mounted horizontally. Now imagine two, instead of one, of those wings, mounted on top of the fuselage, tilting vertically, with both combustion and electric engines mounted on them. That’s the core of our tandem tilt-wing architecture.”

How does the hybrid powerplant work in practice, combining SAF-powered turboprops with hydrogen fuel cell electric engines?

“Our proprietary powerplant, PowerBridge HyVolt, which we announced in July 2026, couples a high-RPM combustion engine running on kerosene or SAF with a low-RPM electric engine powered by hydrogen fuel cells. This lets us throttle jet fuel consumption down to a minimum while maximising the efficiency of our electric engines, enabling a 100% electric cruise phase and an enormous reduction in overall fuel burn.”

With a 600-mile range and 4.5-ton payload, how does the LA-44 compare to existing helicopters or regional aircraft on efficiency?

“We’re roughly 5x more fuel efficient than helicopters. A helicopter must keep its rotors turning against gravity for the entire flight just to stay airborne for the entire journey. Our eVTOL uses two wings, giving us a highly efficient cruise over distances of up to 1,000km.

“We’re also far more flexible in terms of routing – connecting airports to vertiports that need only a 50m x 50m landing footprint, versus the 800–1,000m runway a regional airplane requires.”

What are the biggest certification challenges for an aircraft of this scale and complexity?

“We view certification as we would for any new aircraft category, particularly eVTOL, hydrogen, or battery-driven platforms. We’re already laying the groundwork with EASA, the FAA, UK CAA, GCAA, and others, and we estimate a certification timeline of roughly 3-4 years.”

You’ve secured over €1.42bn in pre-orders, including a major SkyClinic deal for India – what’s driving that demand?

“We’re the frontrunner, and currently the only company with an eVTOL of this payload and range class at a global level. We’re also the only ones to have opened three mission profiles simultaneously – passenger, cargo, and EMS.

“Combined with our strategic partnerships across suppliers, infrastructure, governments, operators, and investors, this has translated into a strong and yet currently further growing pre-order pipeline.”

What’s the realistic timeline for getting the LA-44 into commercial operation?

“We’re targeting 2032 for SkyBus, SkyTruck, and SkyClinic to enter commercial operation.”

What do you hope attendees take away from your talk at the show?

“I want them to see the opportunity that SkyBus, SkyTruck, and SkyClinic represent – a shift in future mobility that’s coming, inevitably. And I hope it inspires them to help build that next level of disruption with us, whether through infrastructure, operations, or investment.”