What happened
Virgin Galactic (SPCE -11.74%) sends its spacecraft to extremely lofty heights, but here on our planet, the company's stock obeyed gravity on Wednesday. The shares fell by almost 3%, a steeper decline than the S&P 500 index's 0.6% drop, despite news of a fresh executive appointment.
So what
The newest member of Virgin Galactic's executive team is one of the company's pilots, Kelly Latimer. She has been named its director of flight test.
Image source: Getty Images.
This is a logical next step for the very experienced Latimer. She led numerous flights on Virgin Galactic craft after joining the company as a test pilot in 2015. Prior to that, she leveraged her expertise in several high-ranking pilot roles at aerospace and defense king Boeing during a more than eight-year stint.
In addition to a brief stretch at NASA, she served a 20-year tenure in the Air Force, flying over 90 combat missions and retiring with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
As to her new position, Virgin Galactic quoted its president of space missions and safety Mike Moses as saying that "The role of director of flight test is essential to our mission. We are on the precipice of delivering commercial space travel at scale, and the safe, efficient, and timely execution of our flight test programs will be a key part of our success."
Now what
While Latimer's promotion seems well-deserved and beneficial to Virgin Galactic's operations, it might have served as a reminder that the company doesn't have much else to report. And that's not a positive for investors, many of whom have patiently waited for the company to begin its regular commercial space flight operations.
These have been pushed forward to (hopefully) late this year, from the originally anticipated 2020. Perhaps if Virgin Galactic released some beneficial news on this front rather than a managerial appointment (albeit a good one), investors would have reacted more optimistically than they did on Wednesday.
