Air taxis set to land Canadian jobs and revenue

New research by Hori­zon Air­craft shows grow­ing sup­port for the devel­op­ment of air taxi ser­vices in Cana­da, with73% of Cana­di­ans sup­port­ing the devel­op­ment of the eVTOL indus­try.

Near­ly four out of five (78%) would be hap­py to fly in them once they are com­mer­cial­ly oper­a­tional. Just 7% say they would nev­er use an eVTOL, while 15% are cur­rent­ly unde­cid­ed. A major rea­son dri­ving sup­port for the indus­try is the poten­tial to cre­ate jobs and boost the Cana­di­an econ­o­my while also help­ing cut green­house gas emis­sions by reduc­ing traf­fic con­ges­tion.

The glob­al air taxi and urban air mobil­i­ty indus­try is fore­cast to see rev­enues grow from $2.3 bil­lion in 2021 to as much as $30.7 bil­lion by 2031, with more than 430,000 air taxis oper­at­ing world­wide.

The research by Hori­zon found that 75% of Cana­di­ans believe the jobs boost for Cana­da should increase Gov­ern­ment sup­port for the sec­tor, while 68% want the Gov­ern­ment to tar­get becom­ing a world leader in eVTOL devel­op­ment.

Near­ly sev­en out of 10 (69%) of Cana­di­ans believe the country’s geog­ra­phy and land­mass give it major advan­tages over oth­er coun­tries and present a com­pelling case for devel­op­ing a strong eVTOL mar­ket. Around 74% believe using eVTOLs will ben­e­fit urban areas by cut­ting traf­fic con­ges­tion and its impact on the envi­ron­ment.

Bran­don Robin­son, CEO of Hori­zon Air­craft, said: “The eVTOL mar­ket is expand­ing rapid­ly and will soon be a major glob­al indus­try, which Cana­da can become a world leader in. We already have strong sup­port from reg­u­la­tors and the Gov­ern­ment, and pub­lic sup­port is increas­ing as peo­ple see the oppor­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate jobs and gen­er­ate rev­enue.”

Hori­zon Aircraft’s Cavorite X5 eVTOL is built for longer-range region­al pas­sen­ger or car­go, as well as spe­cial mis­sions. It will take off and land ver­ti­cal­ly like a heli­copter but will fly almost twice as fast at a frac­tion of the cost. It will have a max­i­mum pas­sen­ger capac­i­ty of four plus a pilot, a pay­load of 500 kg (1,100 lb), and an aver­age range of 800 km (500 miles) with full fuel reserves.

Horizon’s tech­nol­o­gy allows its Cavorite X5 to fly 98% of its mis­sion in a very low-drag con­fig­u­ra­tion like a tra­di­tion­al air­craft. The full-scale air­craft will also be pow­ered by a hybrid elec­tric sys­tem that can recharge the bat­tery array in-flight while pro­vid­ing addi­tion­al sys­tem redun­dan­cy.

The study was con­duct­ed in May 2023 by inde­pen­dent research agency Pure Pro­file among a nation­al­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of 1,000 Cana­di­ans aged 18-plus, which includ­ed 203 who cur­rent­ly live in or have lived in a remote area of Cana­da.

In April, Hori­zon Air­craft suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed ini­tial tran­si­tion flight test­ing of its Cavorite X5 half-scale eVTOL pro­to­type at Ontario Tech University’s ACE Cli­mat­ic Wind Tun­nel in Cana­da.

Hori­zon Air­craft com­pletes wind tun­nel tran­si­tion flight test­ing