Sebastien Vigneron has been named the new CEO of Wisk Aero, a market leader in advanced air mobility (AAM) and a Boeing subsidiary. He takes over the position after Brian Yutko leaves to take a senior leadership role in Boeing’s Commercial Airplanes Division (BCA). Vigneron joins his new role with a solid foundation in programme leadership and aerospace engineering.
He was instrumental in advancing the development of Wisk’s Generation 6 aircraft while he was Senior Vice President of Engineering and Programmes. He oversaw the coordination of hardware and software engineering, flight and systems testing, simulation, and autonomy, among other important technological areas.
His hiring comes at a critical time for Wisk as the company moves forward with its certification process and prepares its Gen 6 aircraft for flight. Wisk’s long-term objectives and Sebastien Vigneron’s in-depth understanding of the aircraft development lifecycle put him in a strong position to guide the business as it moves closer to commercial launch.
Former Wisk CEO Yutko will join Boeing Commercial Airplanes as Vice President of Product Development. Yutko will continue to oversee strategy and keep Boeing and Wisk in a supportive relationship in his new role.
Wisk, a separate company owned by Boeing, is dedicated to achieving its goal of becoming the first autonomous aircraft to carry passengers in the US market. For the company’s innovative aspirations in the future of air travel, the leadership change signifies both continuity and new impetus.
Who Is Sebastien Vigneron?
Born and reared in France, Sebastien Vigneron initially became interested in technology and engineering. He studied aerospace engineering to further this interest, graduating from one of France’s top engineering schools. His education prepared him for a career in the aerospace industry, where he has established himself as a leader who prioritises strategy, innovation, and operational excellence.
Early in his career, Vigneron worked for a number of well-known aerospace firms, including Airbus. He specialised in the creation and administration of intricate engineering projects while gaining experience in a variety of technical and leadership capacities. Vigneron held executive positions at a number of other aerospace and aviation-related businesses before joining Wisk as CEO. He worked on projects involving aircraft systems, engineering design, and strategic development. Vigneron spent the early part of his career, six years in total, at Dassault Aviation, where he worked on the Falcon 5X, 6X and 7X programmes, including as aerodynamics group lead.
Then he moved to Bombardier in 2011, where he spent eight years and contributed to the CSeries (now called the Airbus 220) commercial aircraft programme and Bombardier’s Global business-jet programmes. Under his watch, Bombardier achieved the Global 7500’s certification in 2018. Vigneron then took a job with Virgin Hyperloop, which had been developing a high-speed passenger transportation system involving a magnetically levitated vehicle travelling inside a tube.
Sebastien Vigneron was in charge of spearheading new business endeavours, alliances, and technological developments at a large aerospace company prior to joining Wisk as the Executive Vice President of Strategy and Innovation. Among the advanced aviation technologies he has contributed to are electric and autonomous flight systems. As the leader of Wisk, a company dedicated to the development of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for urban air mobility, Vigneron was a perfect fit due to his extensive knowledge of both aerospace engineering and business strategy.
He also led aerodynamics for that company’s supersonic business jet research programme and contributed to the Solar Impulse programme to develop a solar-powered experimental aircraft, a project that spurred Vigneron’s interest in innovating new types of aerospace products.
It is anticipated that Vigneron’s leadership will be crucial to developing Wisk’s autonomous flight technology and introducing cutting-edge air transportation options to international markets. Vigneron has established himself as a pivotal figure in the quickly developing field of urban air mobility thanks to his long aerospace career and strategic vision.
Certification Challenge Lies Ahead
Sebastien Vigneron believes he has the aircraft-development experience needed to lead the company’s transition into the critical phase of flight testing and certification.
“I have 20 years of experience developing new aerospace products, in the US, in Canada, in Europe. I have covered the entire product-development life cycle, from a clean sheet… through detailed design, build, test, certification, entry into service,” he told FlightGlobal.
Talking about his leadership style, Vigneron remarked, “I bring a good blend of the rigour and discipline of aerospace product development and \[of] certification… I am able to navigate both sides of that world, and I’m able to maintain the right balance. I always assume good intent, and I believe in the people. I work for my team. I support my team. And I do everything I can so that they can be successful.”
Stating that the CEO transition does not reflect any shift to Wisk’s broader strategy, Vigneron noted, “The mission is not changing. The game plan is not changing.”
Wisk has flown several eVTOL designs in recent years but is now inching closer to beginning flight tests of its Gen 6 prototype, the variant it aims to bring through certification. The new CEO said that the company is eyeing the upcoming summer for the first flight of the prototype while certifying the eVTOL before the end of the decade.
The Gen 6 air taxi will carry four passengers, have 78nm (145km) of range, fly at 110-120kt (204-222 km/h), and charge in 15 minutes. The eVTOL will come equipped with fixed wings and 12 propellers mounted in pairs on wing-mounted booms. All 12 propellers produce lifting thrust, while the forward six props also rotate to provide forward thrust. While pilotless, the air taxis are monitored by humans on the ground.
While there are questions about whether the battery technology has advanced sufficiently to enable high-frequency, taxi-like flights, Vigneron insists the electric-propulsion technology is up to the task.
“I was very much attracted by the prototyping mindset, pushing the boundaries, bold innovation, quick iteration, learning by doing,” says Vigneron. Like other eVTOL developers, Wisk faces a tall task in bringing an aircraft as novel as its Gen 6 through certification. However, the company and its competitors at least now have a roadmap, as the Federal Aviation Administration in 2024 issued both a rule defining air taxi operational and pilot-training requirements and an advisory providing guidance for certificating air taxis under existing airworthiness regulations.
“It’s laying out the path for certification… It’s all going in the right direction. The principles we need to follow exactly, and the methodology, is the same. How do we show compliance to those things? That’s where the challenge is,” Sebastien Vigneron noted.
And while regulators have never approved types like eVTOLs before, Vigneron says the certification process, specifically the certification “guiding principles,” is the same as for conventional aircraft. The company’s system integration test rigs are “firing on all cylinders,” said Vigneron, while adding, “We are deep into the weeds of safety-of-flight testing right now.”
Wisk is also conducting aerodynamic evaluations of a subscale Gen 6 model at Boeing’s V/STOL Wind Tunnel facility in Philadelphia. Those wind-tunnel tests will last several months, Vigneron said, while adding, “We are going to be doing a lot of endurance testing, durability testing… We need to get a lot of hours under the belt.”
Wisk operates “completely independently from Boeing” but has access to some of the aerospace giant’s resources, such as the wind-tunnel facility, Vigneron said. Wisk has also been leveraging Boeing’s manufacturing capabilities in Seattle and in the Mesa area for so many different components.
“We are exploring new ways of doing product development, new ways of running a development programme. We bring all those learnings back to Boeing, and that’s why the connection with Boeing product development makes sense. We are learning from each other,” Vigneron concluded.
Most of Wisk’s competitors, Joby Aviation, Archer Aviation, Eve Air Mobility, and Beta Technologies, are developing air taxis that will, initially at least, be controlled by an onboard human pilot. However, Wisk is undertaking the more ambitious goal of developing and certifying an autonomous air taxi from the start.
Sebastien Vigneron sees autonomy enabling air taxis to be economically viable, where operators will not incur the cost of employing pilots, with pilotless aircraft having room for one more paying passenger.
Image Credits:muraena.ai