Lassale: Verticon Opens as Industry Is at ‘Inflection Point’

François Lassale heads into his first Verticon as the president and CEO of Vertical Aviation International (VAI) as the event is gaining momentum. The show—in its second edition as Verticon and building off the 35 years held as Heli-Expo—has 15,000-plus registrations, more than 650 exhibitors, 280,000 sq ft of exhibit space filled, and some 60 aircraft on static display.

“It’s shaping up to be a really good one,” he told AIN ahead of this week’s event. “We're ahead of the drag curve, which is great for me. The team’s been working tirelessly for this.”

But Lassale quickly added that the important part for him: this is the first in his current role as the industry reaches an “inflection point.” He explained, “Helicopters remain essential to society. Period. That’s not going to change. But we’re also seeing a lot of these new entrants coming into the market, and it's not a dystopian future— it's a reality.”

Lassale conceded that it is too soon to tell how many of these new entrants will be certified. “We don’t know at this point. Certification is tough…and I think they're finding out what degree of investment and time it is.”

But the industry must be prepared, Lassale continued. “There’s a whole bunch of expectation around the new technology. For me, it's about how VAI positions itself at this inflection point, and that's why we've pursued the [eVTOL] industry.”

He has been making the rounds with several of the developers of advanced air mobility (AAM) aircraft, with Eve, Joby, Archer, and Wisk, among those on his visit list. “They are coming to the show,” he noted, with Eve bringing a mockup. “They’re going to be present.”

VAI is staging events at Verticon to help lure the sector, including an airline panel, because many are chasing lucrative large orders in that segment. “That’s what the investors would like,” he said. “We understand it. But what we're trying to say to them is that VAI is your home.”

Lassale is also hoping to drive home the point that there are important reasons VAI should be their home. “They’re operating in the same airspace as helicopters and drones,” he said. “We're out there, defending the airspace.”

He noted that after the Jan. 29, 2025 accident involving a U.S. Army Black Hawk and PSA Airlines CRJ700, there was a political knee-jerk push to shut down helicopter routes across the country—not only in the Washington, D.C. area where the accident occurred but in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

“They started shutting down routes, and VAI is front and center out there on the hill and with the FAA, arguing the case to keep those heliports open and those routes open,” Lassale stressed. “Those are the very routes and heliports that will be converted to vertiports and what AAM will use.”

According to Lassale, helicopters have nearly 100 years of experience operating in the airspace. He reiterated, “It's not about design and certification of these machines; it's about our whole ecosystem—workforce development, vertiport design, electrification of vertiports, fire suppression, and airspace integration with the ATC modernization coming.

“If you've got drones, AAM, and helicopters all operating in the same airspace in congested areas, the human controller can't control it all, so the ATC modernization is a piece of it, and we are the ones who are joining all those dots together to say, ‘We need to make sense of this.’”

Collaboration is the only way to accomplish the integration, he maintained. “We're trying to pull all the parties together to have a joined-up conversation, which is really important. So for me, Verticon is a great place where the entire vertical lift ecosystem comes together to make sense of that change, and not just to talk about it, but to actually shape that change.”

As far as attendance at Verticon from the AAM sector, Lassale conceded it was down a little bit last year. He acknowledged that money is a factor with these companies since they need to bring products to market. They focused instead on shows such as the Paris Air Show, where they could position themselves with the airlines.

But Lassale believed this needed to change. “So, we’ve had a major push. I'm visiting them, going to the facilities, and talking to these folks about what's important to be part of the VAI family because we're out there daily protecting the airspace they can operate in.”

Admittedly, there is still some disconnect, he said. “There’s still a bunch of people working in silos.” Not only is VAI trying to bring the AAM sector into the fold, but it must reassure the legacy sector.

“Our job is to bring that community together and alleviate any concerns from the helicopter industry that these things are coming to take over,” Lassale said. “That's not the reality. Helicopters remain the backbone of the vertical lift industry today, and they will remain for decades. What's changing is that they're not alone anymore.”

Verticon is being “very deliberate” to demonstrate that helicopters and AAM are part of a single vertical lift future, he said. “They're complementary, they're not competitive. It's evolution, it's not replacement.”

Lassale stressed, “What’s so powerful about Verticon is it’s the only place where everybody comes together, the whole community—all the stakeholders, regulators, insurers, maintainers, AAM companies, operators. And it's about having those joined-up conversations.”

The myriad panels and training sessions this week at Verticon are designed to reflect that, he added, noting that many of the big expos focus on a slice of the industry. “We’re trying to connect the whole value chain. I think that's where the real progress will happen.”

More than 100 educational sessions and technical briefings are planned at the show this week, in addition to a career fair and VAI’s Mil2Civ workshop to help military personnel transition to civilian life. Lassale further pointed to a drone cage, enabling drone demonstrations and the Aerospace Maintenance Council’s Snap-On maintenance competition, designed to foster interest in rotorcraft maintenance. Also along those lines is the presence of the Pino Foundation activities for young people.

As usual, Verticon is hosting an array of government officials and other dignitaries, including FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford joining the stage with EASA Executive Director Florian Guillermet. 

In addition to innovation, the community wants to focus on an array of safety, operational, technical, and other issues, particularly through the education sessions: “That's an important thing, the takeaways that those folks get out of the education program and what they can bring back and deploy onto the front line.”

And then VAI’s ambitions are to bring those issues globally. He pointed to plans for the first international event to be held in May in Bali. The three-day event is designed to bring the Southeast Asian community together to delve into operational and other challenges and highlight lessons learned from Europe, North America, and other parts of the world.

“We’ve taken those lessons learned, and we’ve converted them into practical takeaways. We are trying to deliver those practical takeaways to regions where there’s immature oversight and immature safety standards. I’m really excited about that,” he said.

While broadening the international reach, Lassale reiterates that plans are to “double down” on the domestic issue. “If I do that—if we have influence on the Hill, which comes out in reauthorization and funding for the FAA, if we have influence in the FAA, and we have influence at ICAO level— that filters to the four corners of the world,” he said. “We want to double down on what we do here, and then we use vehicles like our show in Bali, and we're going to do one in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America as we evolve it.”

Ultimately, Lassale reiterated, “Our show is impressive in its size, our show floor, our education program, the people we've got coming, the sheer amount of people we've got coming, but the real value for me is in the rooms where the operators are sitting down comparing notes, where the regulators are listening, where the industry leaders are challenging each other to do better. That's where change starts, that's what's so powerful about Verticon and bringing that community together.”