VAI/f-stop Photography VAI’s Lassale stresses association’s value for future of AAM By Mark Huber VAI President and CEO François Lassale answered audience questions this morning, Mar. 12, during “Straight Talk, Real Change,” a fireside chat on the VERTICON 2026 Main Stage. Lassale stressed the organization’s important role in shaping the emerging multibillion-dollar advanced air mobility (AAM) ecosystem while continuing to provide valuable advocacy, safety, and education services for all of vertical aviation. He emphasized that decisions about VAI initiatives would be “data driven” to better serve member needs, particularly in the areas of advocacy and safety. “It’s about providing real value to folks who are right on the front line. For me, that has to be the objective,” he said. Effective advocacy relies on data, Lassale noted, particularly “to prevent draconian rulemaking from affecting your businesses. “Our Government Affairs department may not have the resources of bigger associations, but we punch way above our weight on Capitol Hill. We get calls from folks on the Hill asking our advice. That means we’re much more powerful. If you look at our history and you look at any litigious cases that we fought on your behalf, we have a much higher success rate than most other associations,” he said. Lassale counseled that AAM, including electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, is the future of vertical aviation, using market size to make the point. “Helicopter OEMs over the past five years have spent roughly $6.5 billion on advancements in technologies, low-emissions, low-noise, hybrid-propulsion systems, different rotor-blade designs, all that sort of stuff,” he said. “While that’s been good, does anybody have any idea of how much has been invested in advanced air mobility over the same period? Twenty-eight and a half billion. That opens a lot of doors and generates a lot of heat and energy on Capitol Hill and with the FAA. “We want to make sure the advanced air mobility folks understand that VAI is their home. We are vertical flight. We share the same DNA, take off and land vertically, and will use the same heliports and vertiports,” he said. “And we’re focused on the whole ecosystem. VAI is fighting to keep the helicopter routes open that AAM will use. It’s not anybody else.” Mark Huber is an aviation journalist with more than two decades of experience in the vertical flight industry.
