LONDON & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 2, 2026--
Vertical Aerospace (“Vertical” or the “Company”) (NYSE: EVTL), a global aerospace and technology company pioneering electric aviation, today announced the appointment of Andrew Teich to its Board of Directors, effective from today.
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Mr. Teich brings more than 40 years of experience developing and commercialising advanced technologies for military, industrial and commercial customers. He spent nearly two decades in senior leadership at FLIR Systems (now Teledyne FLIR LLC), culminating as President and CEO from 2013 to 2017. During that time, FLIR grew from a market capitalisation of approximately $60 million to more than $6 billion and became a global leader in advanced sensing and imaging systems.
A named inventor on over 50 U.S. and international patents, Mr. Teich brings extensive experience in U.S. Department of War programmes, advanced sensing technologies, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and UAV technologies, all of which are directly relevant to Vertical’s expanding defence and dual-use applications. He currently serves as a consultant to the U.S. Department of War.
He also has significant corporate growth, transformation and transaction experience, having acquired and integrated more than 35 technology businesses during his career.
Mr. Teich joined FLIR in 1999 after the company acquired Inframetrics Inc., where he grew revenue threefold.
He currently chairs the boards of two public companies, sensing company Sensata Technologies (NYSE: ST) and technology provider Resideo Technologies (NYSE: REZI).
Mr. Teich joins recently appointed Chair, Fabrice Brégier, former Airbus Commercial Aircraft CEO, and directors Clyde Woltman, former Leonardo Helicopters U.S. CEO, and Marc Fontaine, former Airbus executive and current Helsing France CEO. The appointments strengthen Vertical’s leadership as it advances Valo towards certification and commercial operations and progresses hybrid-electric, defence and other dual-use applications.
As previously announced on 24 September 2026, Vertical has retained Jefferies LLC as its financial advisor in connection with its review of strategic alternatives, including potential strategic and financial partnerships to advance the next stage of development.
Stuart Simpson, CEO of Vertical Aerospace, said:
“Andy understands both what advanced technology can do and what defence customers need it to deliver. He has taken innovations from development into demanding operational environments, experience that will help us make better decisions about where to take our technology and how to turn its potential into commercial opportunities.
“With Fabrice, Clyde, Marc and Andy, we have brought together leaders who have delivered aircraft programmes, built technology businesses and served military customers. Their experience is invaluable as we bring our products to market. Andy’s decision to join, following these recent appointments, says a great deal about how people who have built and led major aerospace, defence and technology businesses view Vertical. Each of them sees the growth potential in our aircraft, our technology and our team.”
Andrew Teich, Non-Executive Director of Vertical Aerospace, said:
“My experience at FLIR taught me to look beyond the development milestones to what proprietary technology can deliver in operational service. That is what attracts me to Vertical: a highly capable team, Valo’s certification programme targeting the highest safety standard in the eVTOL category, and an architecture designed to accommodate a hybrid-electric powertrain, opening up clear defence and dual-use applications. I believe the market has yet to recognise the full value of that combination.
“My immediate focus will be working with Fabrice, the Board and the leadership team, alongside Jefferies, to bring in the right strategic or financial partners to support Vertical through certification and into commercialisation.”
About Vertical Aerospace
Vertical Aerospace is a global aerospace and technology company pioneering electric aviation. Vertical is creating a safer, cleaner, and quieter way to travel. Valo is a piloted, four-passenger, Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft, with zero operating emissions. Vertical is also developing a hybrid-electric variant, offering increased range and mission flexibility to meet the evolving needs of the advanced air mobility market.
Vertical combines partnerships with leading aerospace companies, including Honeywell, Syensqo and Sonaca, with its own proprietary battery and propeller technology to develop the world's most advanced and safest eVTOL.
Vertical has c.1,500 pre-orders of Valo, with customers across four continents, including American Airlines, Avolon, Bristow, GOL and Japan Airlines. Certain customer obligations are expected to be fulfilled via third-party agreements. Headquartered in Bristol, UK, Vertical's experienced leadership team comes from top-tier aerospace and automotive companies such as Rolls-Royce, Airbus, GM, and Leonardo. Together, they have previously certified and supported over 30 different civil and military aircraft and propulsion systems.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that relate to our current expectations and views of future events. We intend such forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements as contained in Section 27A of the Securities Act and Section 21E of the Exchange Act. Any express or implied statements contained in this press release that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding the anticipated Board changes, the design and manufacture of our aircraft and the hybrid-electric variant, certification and the commercialization of our aircraft and our ability to achieve regulatory certification of our aircraft product on any particular timeline or at all, the features and capabilities of the aircraft, business strategy and plans and objectives of management for future operations, including the building and testing of our prototype aircraft on timelines projected, selection of suppliers, the Company’s ability to obtain additional financing on acceptable terms or at all, the outcome of any financing or strategic alternative review process, as well as statements that include the words “expect,” “intend,” “plan,” “believe,” “project,” “forecast,” “estimate,” “may,” “should,” “anticipate,” “will,” “aim,” “potential,” “continue,” “are likely to” and similar statements of a future or forward-looking nature. Forward-looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected, including, without limitation the important factors discussed under the caption “Risk Factors” in our Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) on March 24, 2026, as such factors may be updated from time to time in our other filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date hereof and accordingly undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. We disclaim any obligation or undertaking to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than to the extent required by applicable law.
Vertical Aerospace appoints defence technology pioneer and former FLIR CEO Andrew Teich to its Board of Directors
The stakes in Tuesday’s midterm elections are so high that Shane Dunn voted for the first time in his life, at age 65.
After a career as a cook up and down the East Coast, Dunn moved to the Philadelphia suburbs and voted last week in Levittown. “I was always a busy man,” he said outside his polling place. But now, “I’m learning what’s going on within our country, and this is actually what brought me out.”
Democrats got his vote. “It feels great, to put my word in,” he said, patting the “I Voted” sticker on his black hoodie.
Voters across the United States are getting their word in, too, as they determine which party controls the Senate and the House and takes charge of governors' offices, legislatures and state leadership posts in the final two years of Republican Donald Trump’s presidency.
What many of them see is that the America they've known is slipping away.
They see lawlessness coming from those who create the laws. They see hate stirred by politicians among neighbors, corruption at every turn, billionaires ruling the roost and a culture that doesn’t speak to how they live — in short, American bedrock at risk of crumbling. Not to mention those crazy gas prices.
In dozens of Associated Press interviews with people who cast ballots at advance polling places or drop boxes across the country, the angst was palpable, most sharply from those who oppose Trump but also from many who support him.
“I saw my vote today as trying to put the brakes on just the madness,” said Arthur Horner, 59, who runs a food importing and marketing company that has been hurt by tariffs, after dropping his mail ballot at Dauphin County’s election bureau in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He voted for Democrats.
In Sioux City, Iowa, cattle rancher Elizabeth Marlett, 61, voted in Woodbury County’s historic Prairie-style courthouse and walked out stewing about a variety of things — the chemicals in processed food, her son’s struggles to get his veterans' benefits and, perhaps most of all, what she sees as society's leftward lurch. Things seem broken to her, too.
“Family values are going by the wayside, and they need to be brought back,” she said. “Our liberties have been stomped all over. Religion has been stomped all over. And I believe we in the majority need to step up and stop being silent.” She voted Republican.
The anger in the air, stirred by a cursing president who abides no slights, is too much for some people.
“He's just destroying us,” Democrat Linda Markle, 72, said of the president. She spoke outside the Warminster Township library in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
“I am so afraid for this country,” she said. “People used to look out for each other. Not anymore.”
“All people do now is just hate each other,” she said, and Trump “seems to have given them the courage to go ahead and be like that. … The division is horrible, absolutely horrible, and I can’t wait to see the back of him.”
Republican Chris Smith, 27, a Harrisburg software engineer who voted for Trump in 2024, sympathizes with Markle's sentiment, to a point.
“A lot of people hate him for various reasons, and I can understand why,” he said, noting that ”I think he’s kind of going a bit crazy on a lot of things.” But he likes Trump’s effort to return manufacturing to the U.S. along with the goals of his tariffs, and he voted Republican because he still thinks that party is more fiscally responsible than Democrats.
In Ohio, Lori Wilkinson, a retired home health worker from New Pittsburg, and her husband, David, a janitor, consider themselves independents. David recently wrote to their Republican governor, Mike DeWine, to tell him what a good job he's doing, and they voted for Republican George W. Bush for president in the past.
Trump? “He’s the worst president in United States history,” David said from the Wayne County election center. “You get up every day, and you’re like, ‘What’s he going to do now?’” Said Lori: “He’s got the hate just so bad, it’s just out of hand. It’s just out of control.” She fears that if Democrats win widely Tuesday, Trump will “go fricking berserk.”
Trump supporter Therese Mennell gets it. “There’s that kind of arrogant vibe about him that people don’t like, and sometimes I shut him off because of the way he talks,” the retiree said from the Wayne County center. “But, I mean, he’s doing the right thing. He is saving our country.”
Despite his striking unpopularity in polls, Trump repeatedly asked supporters to pretend he's on the midterm ballot, betting that would motivate fans to vote who otherwise might not. But that cuts both ways.
Samontae Mwangi, 20, and his brother, Gathenya Mwangi, 19, voted for the first time, casting early ballots Tuesday at their election center in Topeka, Kansas. Both work at a plant that manufactures trackside buildings for railroads.
They went with their grandfather, Lynn Henderson, 68, a retired Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. worker and a former Marine lance corporal who wore a Marine’s cap. Henderson said he took his grandsons to vote because his own mother died recently and he wanted them to have an event to remember him when he’s gone.
All three are hoping that the election produces Democratic victories and political change. Gathenya said the economy and discontent with Trump could motivate people who’ve voted in the past to show up, as well as those who never have. “It really could change, make a difference, I feel, if a lot of people vote,” he said.
Denise Wunder, a retired sandwich shop manager, pulled up to the center in a van featuring a decorative license plate with an American eagle. The strong Trump supporter is the daughter of Democrats. Illegal immigration is her top issue.
“I think Trump is kind of our last hope, because otherwise this world’s going to go to hell in a handbasket,” she said. “Yeah, he says stupid stuff, but, you know, so do we.”
In the Richmond, Virginia, suburb of Henrico County, voters arrived at a steady clip on a crisp fall afternoon a week from Election Day. The moment of decision found one conservative couple, Joan and Frank Bark, lamenting the country's direction.
“I’m afraid Trump has gotten so egotistical, it’s affecting his ability to make intelligent or more favorable decisions," Frank said. But, he said, “I don’t want the decisions that would be generated from that far left side, either.”
Joan, a retiree like her husband, said of Democrats: “I haven’t found very much that they want to change or work with. It’s just mostly, ‘I hate Trump.’" But Trump really isn't on the ballot. They voted for Republican candidates.
In Nanuet, New York, people streamed into the small room of a community center to vote; some were in Halloween costumes. Primrose D. Sullivan, a nurse, is an independent. She scoffed at Trump's wish that voters act as if he's running.
“No, because he’s not,” she said. “When a patient comes into the hospital, you want me dealing in facts, not in, ‘Hmm, let me act like you might have cancer.’ No. Do you or do you not have cancer? We need to proceed based on facts.” She voted for Democrats.
Sullivan was among a number of voters who singled out the billionaires Trump has made common cause with and how that might feed into American decline.
“I don’t begrudge any of our wealthy people, Jeff Bezos or, you know, Elon Musk,” she said. “But I do have a certain problem with them wanting more and more and doing things that really don’t help humanity.”
“If we keep going the way these guys are going,” she went on, meaning both the political and CEO classes, “we’re not going to have anything like what we had in the past.” Theirs is a “self-destructive attitude,” she added, “because, honestly, if the whole planet destroys itself, the wealthy go with us.”
Outside the polling station at the YMCA in Fort Mill, South Carolina, Benjamin Updegraft offered a piercing denunciation of the elite as he traced his evolution from a “full-throated young Republican” who voted for Trump as a young man in 2016 to a “lifetime Democrat,” after casting his ballot in the Senate race.
He cited Musk's throttling of his Starlink satellite internet service in Ukraine, which disrupted a key defense against Russian attacks, and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy's ad in the Ohio governor's race featuring the estranged mother of Democratic rival Amy Acton among the reasons powerful men must be brought to heel.
“That needs to be cut out from this country like a cancer,” Updegraft said. “We have an incredible responsibility to take back the stranglehold that the worst people in this country have on the reins of power and to inflict punishment on them for their actions.”
In Scottsdale, Arizona, David Lee described his conservative upbringing, his past voting for Republicans and now his decision to turn against that party and vote Democratic in the contested races for governors and the House. He considers Trump's heavy-handed immigration enforcement to be lawless.
“Nobody wants open borders, but you’re treating these people without due process, sending people to countries they don’t even belong to,” said Lee, 63. “There’s no more rules.”
The Trump supporters interviewed by the AP at the polls signaled their tolerance of the surge of gas prices from the Iran war, in some cases blaming factors other than the actual cause. Nor did they break with him on the war itself.
Among them was David Stouffer, 59, branch manager for a mortgage bank and three-time Trump voter, who spoke outside the Harrisburg elections office. “Iran has been killing Americans for 50 freaking years,” he said. “Yeah, I’ll suffer with some higher gas prices in the interim until they get that nonsense figured out.”
Does that put a crunch on your household budget, Stouffer was asked. “Of course it does.” How to cope with that? “I just keep driving."
“He’s made the tax cuts real,” Stouffer said. “He has secured the borders. That, to me, is a very, very big deal.”
By the dozens, Democrats, independents and Republicans outside the core of Trump’s support differed with that assessment, even as some of them granted the president his achievements on taxes and immigration.
Horner, the food importer, is going “bonkers” with the tariffs and all the other moves bouncing between the Trump administration and the courts while a “feckless” and now electorally endangered Republican Congress largely stands aside.
“You can’t do business when every month you have to readjust your pricing because the president gets a wild hair on something that he’s not even constitutionally allowed to do,” Horner said. He added, “He’s just playing out the clock on all of this stuff — where you just know he knows it’s wrong.
“And what do we have? Higher healthcare, higher food, higher gas, a business environment that is complete chaos.”
But Jerry Casner, 74, of Mechanicsburg, a suburb of Harrisburg, wants as much of Trump as he can get. Alas, “he can’t run again,” Casner noted.
“Well, technically," Casner said, "he can’t run again.”
Hanna reported from Topeka, Kan.; Levy from Harrisburg, Pa.; Catalini from Levittown, Pa.; and Woodward from Washington. Associated Press journalists Julie Carr Smyth in Wooster, Ohio; Erik Verduzco in Fort Mill, S.C.; Thomas Beaumont in Sioux City, Iowa; Joseph Frederick in Nanuet, N.Y.; Tassanee Vejpongsa in Warminster, Pa.; Mikella Schuettler in Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Sarah Rankin in Henrico, Va., contributed to this report.
C.T. Harris, center, hands out T-shirts supporting Angie Nixon's U.S. Senate campaign during the Souls to the Polls event, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Octavio Jones)
Linda Markle speaks during an interview about her choices in the election, outside the Warminster Township Library in Bucks County, Pa., Oct. 27, 2026, the final day for voters to request a mail-in or absentee ballot in Pennsylvania. (AP Photo/Tassanee Vejpongsa) Image from video
Brothers Gathenya Mwangi, left, 19, and Samontae Mwangi, center, stand with their grandfather, right, Lynn Henderson, outside the Shawnee County Election Office after casting early ballots, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, in Topeka, Kansas. (AP Photo/John Hanna) Photo taken with a smartphone
David Lee poses for a photo, Friday, Oct. 23, 2026, at a polling station in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Mikella Schuettler) Photo taken with a smartphone
Herman Jamerson, 91, left, and his daughter Joni Borrell, 67, both staunch conservatives who voted for Republicans, are pictured after they cast their ballots in Henrico County, Va., Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Sarah Rankin) Image taken with smartphone
Benjamin Updegraft is interviewed after casting his ballot at an early voting center, Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, in Fort Mill, S.C. (AP Photo/Erik Verduzco) Image taken from video
Denise Wunder, 69, of Topeka, Kansas, stands in front of her car outside the Shawnee County Election Office after casting an early ballot, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, in Topeka. (AP Photo/John Hanna) Photo taken with a smartphone
Shane Dunn is pictured during an interview, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, in Levittown, Pa. (AP Photo/Mike Catalini) Image taken from video.
Voters enter the C. Blythe Andrews Jr. Public Library to cast their ballots on the final day of early voting for midterm elections in Tampa, Fla., Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Octavio Jones)
Benjamin Updegraft is interviewed after casting his ballot at an early voting center, Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, in Fort Mill, S.C. (AP Photo/Erik Verduzco) Image taken from video
Linda Markle speaks during an interview about her choices in the election, outside the Warminster Township Library in Bucks County, Pa., Oct. 27, 2026, the final day for voters to request a mail-in or absentee ballot in Pennsylvania. (AP Photo/Tassanee Vejpongsa) Image from video
David Lee poses for a photo, Friday, Oct. 23, 2026, at a polling station in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Mikella Schuettler) Photo taken with a smartphone
Denise Wunder, 69, of Topeka, Kansas, stands in front of her car outside the Shawnee County Election Office after casting an early ballot, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, in Topeka. (AP Photo/John Hanna) Photo taken with a smartphone
Shane Dunn is pictured during an interview, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, in Levittown, Pa. (AP Photo/Mike Catalini) Image taken from video.
Brothers Gathenya Mwangi, left, 19, and Samontae Mwangi, center, stand with their grandfather, right, Lynn Henderson, outside the Shawnee County Election Office after casting early ballots, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, in Topeka, Kansas. (AP Photo/John Hanna) Photo taken with a smartphone
A person drops a vote-by-mail ballot in a secure ballot intake station at the Office of the Supervisor of Elections during early voting in the 2026 midterm elections, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
