Analysis reveals post-pandemic growth in Canadian business aviation market

New research by Hori­zon Air­craft has revealed that Cana­da is see­ing strong growth in its busi­ness avi­a­tion sec­tor. In 2022, there were 182,354 busi­ness air­craft depar­tures in Cana­da, which was 35.63% more than in 2019 (before the pan­dem­ic) when the cor­re­spond­ing fig­ure was 134,445. Glob­al­ly, there was a rise of 16.78% in the num­ber of busi­ness air­craft depar­tures between these two years.

The study showed that the Cana­di­an busi­ness avi­a­tion sec­tor con­tin­ues to grow in 2023. Between the 1st of Jan­u­ary 2023 and the 1st of May 2023 there were 53,824 busi­ness air­craft depar­tures in Cana­da; a rise of 2.85% over the same peri­od from last year. The cor­re­spond­ing fig­ure glob­al­ly is ‑3%. Cana­da con­tin­ues to be a thriv­ing busi­ness avi­a­tion mar­ket.

Of the types of busi­ness air­craft flown in Cana­da dur­ing the first four months of this year, 59% were pro­peller, 17% were small jets, 13% were medi­um sized jets and 11% were larg­er jets.

Bran­don Robin­son, CEO of Hori­zon Air­craft, said: “Canada’s busi­ness avi­a­tion mar­ket both direct­ly and indi­rect­ly sup­ports over 40,000 jobs, and con­tributes as much as $5 bil­lion to GDP.

“Many busi­ness exec­u­tives and high net worth indi­vid­u­als flew pri­vate­ly for the first time dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and now don’t want to go back to using com­mer­cial avi­a­tion. How­ev­er, the biggest dri­ver of growth has been the strong eco­nom­ic per­for­mance of Cana­da.

“The coun­try has sol­id eco­nom­ic fun­da­men­tals, includ­ing robust pop­u­la­tion growth, a strong labour mar­ket, and a well-reg­u­lat­ed and cap­i­talised finan­cial sys­tem. In 2022, Canada’s econ­o­my post­ed the fastest growth in the G7.”

The Hori­zon Air­craft Cavorite X5 eVTOL is built for longer-range region­al pas­sen­ger, car­go and spe­cial mis­sions, and will fly at low­er cost. It will have a max­i­mum pas­sen­ger capac­i­ty of four plus a pilot, a pay­load of 500 kg, and a range of 800 km with full fuel reserves.

Horizon’s tech­nol­o­gy allows the X5 to fly 98% of its mis­sion low-drag like a tra­di­tion­al air­craft, mak­ing it eas­i­er to cer­ti­fy than rad­i­cal eVTOL designs. The full-scale air­craft will be pow­ered by a hybrid elec­tric sys­tem that can recharge the bat­tery array in-flight while pro­vid­ing sys­tem redun­dan­cy.

The X5 design has won sev­er­al grants includ­ing a US Depart­ment of Defence advanced research and devel­op­ment con­tract award, being ahead with a large-scale pro­to­type already fly­ing.

Last month, 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