Canadian Advanced Air Mobility Consortium launched to help integrate electric and hybrid VTOL aircraft across the country

The future of flight in Cana­da has tak­en a major step for­ward today (Wednes­day), with the launch of the Cana­di­an Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Con­sor­tium (CAAM), to help stream­line research, devel­op­ment and com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty sec­tor.

Ini­ti­at­ed and cre­at­ed by Cana­di­an Air Mobil­i­ty and the Nation­al Research Coun­cil of Cana­da (NRC), the mul­ti-stake­hold­er group cur­rent­ly has more than 20 part­ners, includ­ing TransLink, Heli­jet Inter­na­tion­al, British Colum­bia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia, Bell Tex­tron and Iskwew Air.

Among its objec­tives are to cre­ate an inno­va­tion hub to help small and medi­um-sized enter­pris­es grow their tech­nol­o­gy from a low tech­nol­o­gy readi­ness lev­el, to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion, while also expand­ing the AAM sector’s con­nec­tions to reg­u­la­tors, man­u­fac­tur­ers, avi­a­tion oper­a­tors, infra­struc­ture devel­op­ers, acad­e­mia, indus­try, and gov­ern­ments in Cana­da and across the world.

JR Ham­mond, Founder & CEO, Cana­di­an Air Mobil­i­ty and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of CAAM, said: “We’ve estab­lished an out­stand­ing group of strate­gic mem­bers to sup­port the design, inte­gra­tion, and imple­men­ta­tion of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty in Cana­da.

“We look for­ward to demon­strat­ing the eco­nom­ic via­bil­i­ty, envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits and social inclu­siv­i­ty fac­tors of this tech­nol­o­gy and mak­ing Cana­da a world leader in AAM. To that end, we wel­come addi­tion­al mem­bers who share our vision that AAM pro­vides the path toward a safer, health­i­er, and more effi­cient mode of trans­porta­tion.”

In a press release announc­ing the launch, CAAM has said fac­tors which make the Greater Van­cou­ver area a promis­ing mar­ket include: a strong avi­a­tion infra­struc­ture base; an exist­ing sched­uled heli­copter ser­vice, with heli­ports in Van­cou­ver and near­by Vic­to­ria and Nanaimo and numer­ous sci­ence and trans­porta­tion research facil­i­ties.

Oth­er fac­tors include the Province of British Colum­bia and City of Vancouver’s com­mit­ment to the decar­bon­i­sa­tion of trans­porta­tion; and the Pacif­ic Northwest’s Cas­ca­dia cor­ri­dor (Van­cou­ver-Seat­tle-Port­land), as one of the busiest routes for the move­ment of goods and peo­ple between Cana­da and the Unit­ed States.

In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing trans­porta­tion with­in urban and rur­al areas, AAM air­craft will play a crit­i­cal life-sav­ing role in emer­gency response sit­u­a­tions by enabling faster air trans­porta­tion of med­ical sup­plies, blood, donor organs, or patients to and from hos­pi­tals. It will also improve the emer­gency response and assess­ment of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters such as floods and wild­fires.

Dr. Ibrahim Yimer, the NRC’s Vice-Pres­i­dent of Trans­porta­tion and Man­u­fac­tur­ing, said: “The Nation­al Research Coun­cil of Cana­da is proud to be a part of the CAAM con­sor­tium since the start.

“We look for­ward to work­ing with our 20 part­ners who are lend­ing their exper­tise in the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty indus­try to decar­bonise trans­porta­tion, and cre­ate more effi­cient ways of mov­ing peo­ple, goods and ser­vices and sup­port more social­ly con­nect­ed and inte­grat­ed com­mu­ni­ties.”

The future of the new era in avi­a­tion means faster mede­vac ser­vices, upwards of 4.2 mil­lion AAM trav­ellers over the next 20 years, trav­el­ing between down­town Seat­tle and down­town Van­cou­ver in just one hour, expand­ing con­nec­tions in remote com­mu­ni­ties and more
impor­tant­ly, cre­at­ing new jobs.

Cana­di­an Advanced Air Mobility’s white paper which pro­vides fur­ther detail on AAM’s mis­sions and ser­vices for the Greater Van­cou­ver Area, the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Indus­try and the impor­tance as well as why Van­cou­ver was select­ed to be the first region in Cana­da.

CAAM is also host­ing its next quar­ter­ly Dig­i­tal Open House this Fri­day. Octo­ber 30th from 10am to 12noon EDT, which will pro­vide the pub­lic with an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with cur­rent stake­hold­ers and learn more about the progress of AAM work in Cana­da.

For more infor­ma­tion, please vis­it https://canadianaam.com/ for reg­is­tra­tion and future upcom­ing events.