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Hinds appointed OneWeb Satellites CEO

December 17, 2020

By Chris Forrester

OneWeb Satellites, the joint-venture business set up in Florida and owned by OneWeb itself and Airbus, has appointed a new CEO, promoting the current COO James Hinds to the role. He takes over from Tony Gingiss who has headed the business since 2017.

OneWeb’s latest batch of 36 satellites are due for launch on December 18th.

Hinds brings more than 30 years of leadership and engineering experience in the space and satellite industries. Prior to his role as COO of Airbus OneWeb Satellites at the end of 2019, he spent four years with Airbus Defence and Space in Toulouse, France, being responsible for strategic planning of its Space Systems business. Before that, he worked with Airbus and Boeing (and predecessor companies) in satellite engineering, production and project management. Notable achievements include his responsibilities as Airbus program manager for the Hylas 1 satellite (a joint Airbus / India Space Research Organisation programme); director responsible for payload research and development at Airbus including digital processors, active antennas and amplifier development; and as the lead verification engineer of Boeing’s 601HP satellite series.

“James has a broad range of experience as a nuts and bolts satellite builder and as a leader of challenging, industry-leading projects,” said Debra Facktor, Head of US Space Systems for Airbus US Space and Defense, Inc.

“James’ decades of experience have already proven to be incredibly valuable to OneWeb in the past year and we are looking forward to continuing our work with him,” added Massimiliano Ladovaz, CTO at OneWeb. “We also extend our sincere thanks to Tony Gingiss. Under Tony’s leadership, OneWeb Satellites completed the design phase, launched the pilot satellites, opened its state-of-the-art factory in Florida, secured its global supply chain, and delivered over 100 satellites, 74 of which have been launched and are fully operational. Tony has been instrumental in realizing the OneWeb project and we wish him the best in his new endeavours.”

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