Canadian Air Mobility Consortium releases white paper saying Toronto could be early user of advanced air mobility

The Greater Toron­to Area has what it takes to be an ear­ly user of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty, accord­ing to a new paper released by the Cana­di­an Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Con­sor­tium (CAAM).

The paper, called ‘Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Comes to Toron­to: Excit­ing Oppor­tu­ni­ties to Improve Urban
Mobil­i­ty of Peo­ple, Goods and Ser­vices’, was released on Tues­day and pre­pared by NEXA Advi­sors, with the research antic­i­pat­ing the city being the first deploy advanced air mobil­i­ty in the med­ical field, trans­port­ing patients, med­ica­tions, defib­ril­la­tors, blood, organs, PPE, and radioiso­topes for can­cer treat­ment.

Since AAM air­craft take off more rapid­ly than heli­copters, they will be able to quick­ly trans­port patients suf­fer­ing life-threat­en­ing emer­gen­cies in rur­al areas of the Gold­en Horse­shoe to the clos­est trau­ma cen­tre. More­over, the health­care sys­tem will also save a great deal of mon­ey using this new type of air­craft, giv­en the low­er cost to pur­chase, oper­ate and main­tain when com­pared to heli­copters.

The research point­ed to sev­er­al fac­tors deter­min­ing Toronto’s like­li­hood of being an ear­ly AAM user: high GDP, extreme road con­ges­tion, world class med­ical facil­i­ties, robust tech, strong finan­cial and STEM edu­ca­tion­al sec­tors, and a flour­ish­ing aero­space indus­try already in place.

Stephen Lund, CEO, Toron­to Glob­al, said: “The intro­duc­tion of a sus­tain­able, equi­table, and prof­itable Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty indus­try in Cana­da and in the Toron­to Region will cre­ate inno­v­a­tive solu­tions to exist­ing envi­ron­men­tal, infra­struc­ture, and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges. We wel­come CAAM’s paper, and its rec­om­men­da­tions, as we seek to lever­age this inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy and pio­neer new oppor­tu­ni­ties for advanced air mobil­i­ty to cre­ate bet­ter out­comes for the Toron­to Region.”

The research point­ed to sev­er­al fac­tors deter­min­ing Toronto’s like­li­hood of being an ear­ly AAM user: high GDP, extreme road con­ges­tion, world class med­ical facil­i­ties, robust tech, strong finan­cial and STEM edu­ca­tion­al sec­tors, and a flour­ish­ing aero­space indus­try already in place.

Advanced air mobil­i­ty will open up new forms of region­al air mobil­i­ty: con­ve­nient, zero emis­sion flights between city pairs whose dis­tances are cur­rent­ly not com­mer­cial­ly viable for air­lines. Pas­sen­gers will be able to hop on quick, qui­et flights from Toronto’s Pear­son Inter­na­tion­al Air­port and Bil­ly Bish­op Toron­to City Air­ports to places like Kitch­en­er, Peter­bor­ough, Bar­rie, Buf­fa­lo, Rochester, Detroit, Pitts­burgh, Syra­cuse, and Cleve­land.

In terms of traf­fic reduc­tion, strate­gic use of AAM air­craft for deliv­ery can remove thou­sands of
trucks from the roads, trucks that often block entire lanes in rush-hour traf­fic. Car­go as diverse as heavy freight, depot-to-depot, retail pack­ages, and just-in-time deliv­er­ies can be deliv­ered in a vari­ety of effi­cient air­craft trav­el­ing above traf­fic. This would result in immense sav­ings in car­bon emis­sions, noise, and wear and tear on the roads.

JR Ham­mond, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of CAAM, said, “Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty is the next expo­nen­tial leap in avi­a­tion. CAAM, as the nation­al voice for the future of zero emis­sion avi­a­tion, is bring­ing the knowl­edge and exper­tise to the greater Toron­to region in help­ing craft the equi­table, inclu­sive and sus­tain­able air trans­porta­tion of our future.”

As a next step, CAAM has retained NEXA Advi­sors to pre­pare an Eco­nom­ic Impact Analy­sis in the com­ing weeks to deter­mine the num­ber of full-time per­ma­nent jobs AAM will bring to the Greater Toron­to Area, as well as tax rev­enues and new over­all eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty.

Based on sim­i­lar stud­ies, Toron­to will like­ly see thou­sands of new jobs, hun­dreds of mil­lions in new tax rev­enues, and bil­lions in new over­all eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty between now and 2045.

CAAM is a Fed­er­al not-For-prof­it organ­i­sa­tion which acts as the nation­al cat­a­lyst for the new advanced air mobil­i­ty indus­try in Cana­da. CAAM has part­nered with more than 50 organ­i­sa­tions includ­ing indus­try, acad­e­mia, pri­vate cap­i­tal and all three lev­els of gov­ern­ment to launch projects aimed at get­ting the indus­try off the ground.

Its goal is to cre­ate a nation­al advanced air mobil­i­ty strat­e­gy for Cana­da while imple­ment­ing region­al rev­enue gen­er­at­ing use cas­es. CAAM was found­ed in part­ner­ship with Canada’s lead­ing fed­er­al research and devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tion, the Nation­al Research Coun­cil of Cana­da (NRC).