Will Become 'Head Of Airworthiness' For The Flying Car Company

Joining the ranks of the AeroMobil team is renowned aerospace certification expert, Hugues Le Cardinal who has senior consulting missions for leading aircraft manufacturers and projects. Hugues brings over two decades of industry experience and entrepreneurial vigor to the team through first class aviation insight and an in-depth aeronautical background.

“The addition of Hugues Le Cardinal (pictured) to the team continues to strengthen AeroMobil’s commitment to delivering a real flying car to market within the next few years. With each contributing expert, the vision of the flying car becomes a reality,” Juraj Vaculik, Co-Founder and CEO of AeroMobil, said in a news release.

Recently, Hugues’ key missions and roles included a position of Head of Airworthiness for a French aviation company Daher-Socata and he is today for Daher, the Applicant Project Certification Manager (PCM) for the Airbus E-Fan 2.0 electrical airplane. Before acting as a senior consultant, Hugues was employed by the French DGAC (National Airworthiness Authority) as a Head of Certification, Continued airworthiness, and General Aviation operations. In this role, he managed several PCMs and was a member of the EASA European Light Aircraft working group, and member of the EASA General Aviation Panel of Experts.

Hugues brings more than 20 years of experience in General Aviation airplanes, sailplanes, motor gliders, balloons, airship, Annex II aircraft Certification and Continued airworthiness. Joining in March, Hugues will heavily contribute to advancing AeroMobil’s airworthiness and ensuring certification standards are achieved within requirements.

Hugues Cardinal was trained at the School of the Air Salon-de-Provence where he received an engineering degree in aeronautics and became a certified pilot. Hugues spent time training to be a fighter pilot shortly after that, but in 1991, he left the program and garnered his rich Air Force training and combined theory for his next chapter. While in the Air Force, he had piloted a broad array of planes including the windfall aircraft: CAP 10B, CM170 Fouga Magister, Embraer 121 Xingu, but also had flights on Alphajet, Mirage III, Mirage F1 and Mirage 2000.

In 1992, he joined the Délégation Générale pour l’Armement (DGA) where he worked in the field of certification of light aircraft for the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC). In 1998, he joined the DGAC as Deputy Head of the General Aviation aircraft airworthiness office of and continued rising through the ranks as Head of General Aviation in 2001-2008 and Head of Certification in 2010-2011. It was in 2011 that he began stepping out on his own to create VELICA S.A.S to act as a consulting firm for the array of aeronautic purposes specializing in certification and airworthiness.

During the last five years, VELICA had an incredible richness in terms of experiences, meetings and missions on behalf of recognized customers. The company assisted in the certification of aircraft changes, for obtaining authorizations of flight or obtaining aeronautical approvals. VELICA, accompanied by the most daring aviation project, keeps its feet on Earth thanks to sharp the evolution of European regulations, American and Chinese knowledge and the operation of certification authorities. With one goal: minimize the time of placing the aircraft of their clients on the market.  For example, the process of certification of the electrical aircraft E-Fan 2.0 developed by AIRBUS INNOVATION. Even through work on the regulatory compliance of the new A310, replacing the old A300 of NOVESPACE, a subsidiary of CNES was designed to perform parabolic flights to create conditions of weightlessness. This knowledge of the functioning of the major institutional actors of Aeronautics and the evolution of the rules of the sector thus allows Hugues Le Cardinal to intervene during training seminars and transmission of know-how for certification of aircraft, airworthiness, and aviation regulations.

AeroMobil’s expanded team is now improving the design of the vehicle and working on new prototypes, which will be subjected to a prescribed test. The smooth running of these processes, the ensured high degree of innovation, and newly recruited experts from both the automotive and aerospace industry, will ensure that the next stage of the project moves to a higher level. This year, the team rose to more than 40 people, seeing specific strengthening mainly in the technical department.

(Image of Le Cardinal provided with AeroMobile news relaese. Other images from file)

FMI: www.aeromobil.com