Chris Brady | Chief Executive Officer
Acro Aircraft Seating | United Kingdom

After training with British Airways, Chris joined Virgin Atlantic in 1990 as an engineer, but moved into marketing in 1993. By the time he left in 2000, he was General Manager Product Development, responsible for innovation across the entire passenger experience – from aircraft livery to uniforms, lounges, drive through check in, inflight entertainment and seats. In 1997, Virgin entered into a joint venture with Reynard Motorsport to create a seat manufacturer to develop Virgin’s first lie-flat beds; Chris was the Managing Director of Reynard Aviation at its inception, before recruiting a management team to run it.
After Chris left Virgin, he co-founded FlightStore, a centre capital backed inflight entertainment software business that provided online shopping via seatback TV. After leaving in 2003, he began working with Acro’s other two founders: Andy Lawler, whom he had met at Reynard Aviation; and Dave Starkey, who had been a colleague of Andy’s on and off for 15 years. The three men would develop an opportunity in electric actuators for first and business class aircraft seats.
In 2006, Dave, Andy and Chris began thinking about an economy seat for low-cost carriers and from this Acro Aircraft Seating was born. Eight years later, Acro has more than 80,000 seats flying with 25 airlines on wide and narrow body aircraft across the US and Europe and continues to grow from its base in the UK.