Incoming Vertical Aviation Association (VAI) president and CEO François Lassale anticipates stepping into his new role in late September or early October, but already is laying the groundwork for a fast start with ambitious plans for elevating the organization on an international stage and across vertical lift.
Lassale is transferring to Alexandria, the home of VAI, from his current base in Bali, Indonesia, where he is CEO of a group of three companies—CEO at SGi, HeliNiugini, and Allway Merit—steering both helicopter operations and the aircraft leasing business. He told AIN he would take the reins at VAI once his visas came through.
“I’m super excited about the opportunity, to be honest with you. I think we’re going to do some great things,” Lassale said. “We’ve done the rebrand now, so now is the time to put our foot down and keep going and integrate this universe that’s evolving around us.”
Lassale is bringing deep experience to that role, having a 35-year background working with numerous civil and commercial fixed- and rotary-wing operations, along with the Royal Air Force. He also brings substantial advocacy experience, having held leadership positions with HeliOffshore and working with the Flight Safety Foundation and NBAA.
He has already been closely tied with VAI, having served as a special advisor to the board on international issues. In particular, he has dived into strategy in Southeast Asia. “I've worked with the board and the team over the last 18 months to try to pull together the resources and the community for our first Southeast Asian safety conference,” he noted.
That event is planned for May 27 to 29, 2026. “We’ve got a lot of interest in the local community,” he said, and explained that the conference came about after he was asked to serve as a keynote speaker at a Bell reception before the wider helicopter community. He discussed pain points, the lack of advocacy, poor safety, poor oversight, and the lack of representation.
Following that, he noted that many of his competitors and other industry members wanted to become involved. “When you look at the numbers about the expansive and explosive growth in this part of the world, it made sense to start it here and then build this out into a proof of concept that we can cut and paste into Africa, the Middle East, and South America,” he said.
The VAI board embraced the idea and greenlighted the regional effort. “I’ve been pursuing that as my role as international advisor on the board. Now that I am stepping into this role, I’m excited to take that further.”
Doubling Down on Domestic Advocacy
However, while the selection of Lassale may be a clear signal of VAI’s international ambitions, he also has an equally clear vision of the needs of the U.S. domestic community.
“When I was invited onto the board as an international advisor, I wanted to see what tangible value proposition we can bring to our constituents and members across 77 countries worldwide,” Lassale said. “Now, obviously, as I’m an international person joining the VAI team full-time, there are some people questioning whether that would detract or dilute what we’re doing in the U.S., because it is the biggest part of our membership and our constituents. My answer to that is no, absolutely not. We will continue what we’re doing.”
He continued, “Actually, we’re doubling down on some of the advocacy.” He pointed to last year’s passage of the FAA reauthorization and the talk of the current administration about advanced air mobility. “They’re driving hard and fast on that,” Lassale maintained. “Whatever happens at an FAA level, certainly in rulemaking, we can advocate and have some influence, and there is a trickledown effect internationally. That spans out to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and South America, and Africa. “
To Lassale, this means playing a role in guiding the domestic agenda and spreading that globally through a network of conferences, summits, shows, and other means. He sees substantial opportunity, particularly on the safety and data side, to build that out internationally.
Noting his time with HeliOffshore, where he held roles as operations director, COO, and CEO, Lassale said those efforts were a driving force with that organization. “We had done a lot of work with a lot of very experienced and qualified people in flight path management, health and usage monitoring, flight data monitoring, and flight path guidance. I had the resources with the oil and gas industry to do that,” he said. “I want to try to get that into the four corners of the world.”
His plans are to spread work on such programs out to the broader community—including the many small operators throughout the U.S., in addition to the international market—and “really to drive that change across the industry.”
These changes are particularly critical now as the community is expanded, Lassale added. “That’s why when this [role] came up, a move from Bali was a big step, but I was like, ‘How exciting is this? To play a role in being able to shape a whole industry right at an inflection point where you’ve got AAM coming in and how we bring all of that together.’”
Perfect Timing
He said the timing is perfect to tie it all together, just as Vertical Aviation International has completed its rebrand from Helicopter Association International. “We sit at this inflection point now as an industry where certification of this equipment is coming. It’s here,” he reiterated. However, Lassale stressed that the goal is not to try to be everything to everybody. “That’s not going to work,” he said. But the goal is to define what is ahead for the community, working with the AAM market.
“For example, the Southeast Asia show down here is not just for helicopters, it’s for the vertical lift community, and we’re trying to attract the advanced air mobility market into the conference. We’re trying to increase that at Verticon, and we’ll do it across the other entities,” he said. Defining the inflection point, he continued, means getting in front of it. “If we don’t define it, somebody else will. It’s about keeping our relevance.”
What this means, he continued, is “we recognize as an organization that we need to be inclusive. We need to bring the communities together. We operate in the same airspace. We have a lot of cross-pollination in our DNA. We’re going to have a lot of cross-workforce flow, from helicopters into eVTOL aircraft and the other way around. We need to support the development of that infrastructure. We need to stare down the barrel of the workforce shortfall coming in 10 years. These are things that we need to position ourselves behind—we take the lead on it and drive that change and bring the community together.”
This is particularly important as the industry has waged a seemingly never-ending battle on the public perception front, particularly with safety.
“Safety is the currency to credibility for us as an industry—whether we’re actually owning that,” Lassale said. “We’re taking responsibility for it as an industry.” Noting the integration of the new technologies, he said, “A lot of people think it’s a dystopian future. It’s not, it’s here. These aircraft are here; they’re being certified. By integrating that community, it helps us deliver a more unified voice.”
A key to all this is data, and Lassale stressed this will be a driving priority. “If we use data and get the data into all the lawmakers’ hands, it adds credibility to what we are doing.” He pointed to efforts in the offshore oil and gas industry with HeliOffshore. “We managed to build the ability for operators to benchmark themselves against the industry and then lobby the EU and the states because we had data. That’s going to be a drive of mine to formulate that platform.”
He said the data demonstrated that “we were saying that we’re building our flight safety roadmap, and we worked very closely with EASA to influence that because we had the data to do it.”
But it also had a wider message: “It helped us lobby governments about the value of vertical lift, and why it’s important, what we do, how many barrels of oil [we support], how many lives we saved, how many fires we extinguished, and how many places we build. It’s data that will give us that credibility on multiple levels.”
HeliOffshore was able to secure the data, he said, because it wasn’t a regulator, giving a degree of confidence about privacy. “If you’ve got to hand your sensitive data to the regulator, there’s always nervousness behind that,” he said. The industry owned the data, and operators could use this to benchmark themselves. “That was massively powerful, and we’ve got acceptance and buy-in that way.”
Operator Assurances
Not only is having data in hand helpful in the court of public perception, but also in demonstrating the value of safety programs and equipage efforts to the operators.
“Under the FAA reauthorization, there is a focus on trying to drive safety enhancements. That’s going to come at a material cost to the industry. Using data shows why it’s important,” Lassale maintained. “The technology is there. It’s much more affordable now, and we need to work with the community, the FAA, and Congress to help drive that change.”
He said the data will showcase “what’s in it for me? What’s the value proposition?” This is important given the Part 135 safety management system (SMS) mandate with other programs such as fatigue mitigation and flight data monitoring. “All these things cost money.”
Also, to help demonstrate the value proposition, the community needs to work with manufacturers on cost-effective solutions and with regulators to ensure there is flexibility and rules aren’t draconian, he said. “As long as they can demonstrate that they can do that cost-effectively, then it’s a solution. It’s working with the community to try and drive that change.”
Even so, Lassale believes that the Part 135 community has grown in its acceptance of SMS. “In the international market, I think it was more accepted than in the domestic market for a long time, since it wasn’t regulated to that degree. But that regulation has come down the pipeline, and I think there’s more acceptance of it.”
Lassale stressed the importance of small operators to the association, since they comprise the majority of the membership. “The key with small operators is to listen to them. It’s important that they feel validated. They’re looking for a trusted advocate, not just in Washington but worldwide.”
He also has a vision that VAI could serve as a community support platform whereby operators could anonymously submit questions surrounding problems they encounter, and other members of the community could share their experiences.
VAI should be a unifying voice spanning both the helicopter and AAM world, but the small operators probably have questions about whether the latter “is coming to take our jobs…. That is genuinely a concern.”
One way to address that is with unified, internationally recognized recommended practices. “That’s such an important thing,” he said. “We currently have about 17 different standards in the helicopter industry, which is crazy.”
All of these efforts are key to broadly elevating safety. Lassale pointed to high-profile accidents such as the January midair collision of a U.S. Army Black Hawk and a Bombardier CRJ700 over the Potomac River, the Bell LongRanger sightseeing crash into the Hudson River, and the 2023 midair collision between two Airbus EC130 B4 aircraft in Australia, and said, “Absolutely every single one of them could be avoided.”
But he added, “Living and working down here in this part of the world, and it’s no different in Africa or South America, for every one of those high-profile ones, there’s probably four or five similar accidents where there is poor decision-making, poor oversight, poor maintenance, and poor knowledge base. It just isn’t there.”
As Lassale awaits his new role, he plans to spend the time hashing out his internal 90-day plan “so when I hit the ground, I hit the ground running, and then I can start the external part of my 90 day plan, which is really to do a lot of collaboration with all the other stakeholders in the industry, listen to our members, to the board, to constituents, and obviously to the internal team.”
He acknowledges that some of his plans are not going to be easy. “You probably have some of the naysayers still out there who [believe] it’s all nonsense. I don’t believe that’s the case at all,” Lassale said. “For me, it's not old versus new. It's tried and tested versus promising up-and-coming aviation, which we then integrate together because they go hand in hand; they don’t sit apart. So, for me it’s a really exciting opportunity.”
His focus is on how to bring a diverse industry together, including fierce competitors, into a cohesive industry. “We’re all benefactors of a safer industry.”
Recently named Vertical Aviation Association (VAI) president and CEO François Lassale anticipates stepping into his new role with plans for a fast start and ambitions to elevate the organization on an international stage and across vertical lift.
Lassale was transferring to Alexandria, the home of VAI, from his current base in Bali, Indonesia, where he is CEO of a group of three companies—CEO at SGi, HeliNiugini, and Allway Merit—steering both helicopter operations and the aircraft leasing business.
“I’m super excited about the opportunity, to be honest with you. I think we’re going to do some great things,” Lassale told AIN. “We’ve done the rebrand now, so now is the time to put our foot down and keep going and integrate this universe that’s evolving around us.”
Lassale, who succeeds James Viola as president and CEO, is bringing deep experience to that role, having a 35-year background working with numerous civil and commercial fixed- and rotary-wing operations, along with the Royal Air Force. He also brings substantial advocacy experience, having held leadership positions with HeliOffshore and working with the Flight Safety Foundation and NBAA.
He has already been closely tied with VAI, having served as a special advisor to the board on international issues. In particular, he has dived into strategy in Southeast Asia. “I've worked with the board and the team over the last 18 months to try to pull together the resources and the community for our first Southeast Asian safety conference,” he noted.
That event is planned for May 27 to 29, 2026. “We’ve got a lot of interest in the local community,” he said, and explained that the conference came about after he was asked to serve as a keynote speaker at a Bell reception before the wider helicopter community. He discussed pain points, the lack of advocacy, poor safety, poor oversight, and the lack of representation.
Following that, he noted that many of his competitors and other industry members wanted to become involved. “When you look at the numbers about the expansive and explosive growth in this part of the world, it made sense to start it here and then build this out into a proof of concept that we can cut and paste into Africa, the Middle East, and South America,” he said.
The VAI board embraced the idea and greenlighted the regional effort. “I’ve been pursuing that as my role as international advisor on the board. Now that I am stepping into this role, I’m excited to take that further.”
Doubling Down on Domestic Advocacy
However, while the selection of Lassale may be a clear signal of VAI’s international ambitions, he also has an equally clear vision of the needs of the U.S. domestic community.
“When I was invited onto the board as an international advisor, I wanted to see what tangible value proposition we can bring to our constituents and members across 77 countries worldwide,” Lassale said. “Now, obviously, as I’m an international person joining the VAI team full-time, there are some people questioning whether that would detract or dilute what we’re doing in the U.S., because it is the biggest part of our membership and our constituents. My answer to that is no, absolutely not. We will continue what we’re doing.”
He continued, “Actually, we’re doubling down on some of the advocacy.” He pointed to last year’s passage of the FAA reauthorization and the talk of the current administration about advanced air mobility. “They’re driving hard and fast on that,” Lassale maintained. “Whatever happens at an FAA level, certainly in rulemaking, we can advocate and have some influence, and there is a trickledown effect internationally.“
To Lassale, this means playing a role in guiding the domestic agenda and spreading that globally through a network of conferences, summits, shows, and other means. He sees substantial opportunity, particularly on the safety and data side.
Noting his time with HeliOffshore, where he held roles as operations director, COO, and CEO, Lassale said those efforts were a driving force with that organization. “We had done a lot of work with a lot of very experienced and qualified people in flight path management, health and usage monitoring, flight data monitoring, and flight path guidance. I had the resources with the oil and gas industry to do that,” he said. “I want to try to get that into the four corners of the world.”
His plans are to spread work on such programs out to the broader community and “really to drive that change across the industry.”
These changes are particularly critical now as the community is expanded, Lassale added. “That’s why when this [role] came up, a move from Bali was a big step, but I was like, ‘How exciting is this? To play a role in being able to shape a whole industry right at an inflection point where you’ve got AAM coming in and how we bring all of that together.’”
Perfect Timing
He said the timing is perfect to tie it all together, just as Vertical Aviation International has completed its rebrand from Helicopter Association International. “We sit at this inflection point now as an industry where certification of this equipment is coming. It’s here,” he reiterated. However, Lassale stressed that the goal is not to try to be everything to everybody. “That’s not going to work,” he said. But the goal is to define what is ahead for the community, working with the AAM market. “If we don’t define it, somebody else will. It’s about keeping our relevance.”
What this means, he continued, is “we recognize as an organization that we need to be inclusive. We need to bring the communities together. We operate in the same airspace. We have a lot of cross-pollination in our DNA. We’re going to have a lot of cross-workforce flow, from helicopters into eVTOL aircraft and the other way around. We need to support the development of that infrastructure. We need to stare down the barrel of the workforce shortfall coming in 10 years. These are things that we need to position ourselves behind—we take the lead on it and drive that change and bring the community together.”
This is particularly important as the industry has waged a seemingly never-ending battle on the public perception front, particularly with safety.
“Safety is the currency to credibility for us as an industry—whether we’re actually owning that,” Lassale said. “We’re taking responsibility for it as an industry.” Noting the integration of the new technologies, he said, “A lot of people think it’s a dystopian future. It’s not. These aircraft are here; they’re being certified. By integrating that community, it helps us deliver a more unified voice.”
A key to all this is data, and Lassale stressed this will be a driving priority. “If we use data and get the data into all the lawmakers’ hands, it adds credibility to what we are doing.” He pointed to efforts in the offshore oil and gas industry with HeliOffshore. “We managed to build the ability for operators to benchmark themselves against the industry and then lobby the EU and the states because we had data. That’s going to be a drive of mine to formulate that platform.”
He said the data demonstrated that “we were saying that we’re building our flight safety roadmap, and we worked very closely with EASA to influence that because we had the data to do it.”
But it also had a wider message: “It helped us lobby governments about the value of vertical lift, and why it’s important, what we do, how many barrels of oil [we support], how many lives we saved, how many fires we extinguished, and how many places we build. It’s data that will give us that credibility on multiple levels.”
Operator Assurances
Not only is having data in hand helpful in the court of public perception, but also in demonstrating the value of safety programs and equipage efforts to the operators.
“Under the FAA reauthorization, there is a focus on trying to drive safety enhancements. That’s going to come at a material cost to the industry. Using data shows why it’s important,” Lassale maintained. “The technology is there. It’s much more affordable now, and we need to work with the community, the FAA, and Congress to help drive that change.”
He said the data will showcase “what’s in it for me? What’s the value proposition?” This is important given the Part 135 safety management system (SMS) mandate with other programs such as fatigue mitigation and flight data monitoring. “All these things cost money.”
Also, to help demonstrate the value proposition, the community needs to work with manufacturers on cost-effective solutions and with regulators to ensure there is flexibility and rules aren’t draconian, he said.
Even so, Lassale believes that the Part 135 community has grown in its acceptance of SMS. “In the international market, I think it was more accepted than in the domestic market for a long time, since it wasn’t regulated to that degree. But that regulation has come down the pipeline, and I think there’s more acceptance of it.”
Lassale stressed the importance of small operators to the association, since they comprise the majority of the membership. “The key with small operators is to listen to them. It’s important that they feel validated. They’re looking for a trusted advocate, not just in Washington but worldwide.”
He also has a vision that VAI could serve as a community support platform whereby operators could anonymously submit questions surrounding problems they encounter, and other members of the community could share their experiences.
VAI should be a unifying voice spanning both the helicopter and AAM world, but the small operators probably have questions about whether the latter “is coming to take our jobs…. That is genuinely a concern.”
One way to address that is with unified, internationally recognized recommended practices. “That’s such an important thing,” he said. “We currently have about 17 different standards in the helicopter industry, which is crazy.”
All of these efforts are key to broadly elevating safety. Lassale pointed to high-profile accidents such as the January midair collision of a U.S. Army Black Hawk and a Bombardier CRJ700 over the Potomac River, the Bell LongRanger sightseeing crash into the Hudson River, and the 2023 midair collision between two Airbus EC130 B4 aircraft in Australia, and said, “Absolutely every single one of them could be avoided.”
But he added, “Living and working down here in this part of the world, and it’s no different in Africa or South America, for every one of those high-profile ones, there’s probably four or five similar accidents where there is poor decision-making, poor oversight, poor maintenance, and poor knowledge base. It just isn’t there.”
While Lassale was awaiting his new role, he spent the last few months hashing out his internal 90-day plan “so when I hit the ground, I hit the ground running, and then I can start the external part of my 90 day plan, which is really to do a lot of collaboration with all the other stakeholders in the industry, listen to our members, to the board, to constituents, and obviously to the internal team.”
He acknowledges that some of his plans are not going to be easy. “You probably have some of the naysayers still out there who [believe] it’s all nonsense. I don’t believe that’s the case at all,” Lassale said. “For me, it's not old versus new. It's tried and tested versus promising up-and-coming aviation, which we then integrate together because they go hand in hand; they don’t sit apart. So, for me it’s a really exciting opportunity.”