Blade secures rights to Helijet’s passenger routes and plans to introduce eVTOL aircraft across Canada and US Pacific Northwest

Blade Air Mobil­i­ty has acquired exclu­sive rights to offer sched­uled heli­copter flights oper­at­ed by Heli­jet in Cana­da and across the US Pacif­ic North­west region, with plans to incor­po­rate eVTOL air­craft on routes.

The com­pa­ny will also utilise pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nals at heli­ports con­trolled by Pacif­ic Heli­port Ser­vices, which is a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of Heli­jet and oper­ates and man­ages heli­port infra­struc­ture in Van­cou­ver, Vic­to­ria and Nanaimo, British Colom­bia.

Blade will pay Heli­jet $12 mil­lion to secure the rights for the routes, with Heli­jet to oper­ate Blade flights on exist­ing and joint­ly devel­oped routes, includ­ing cross-coun­try jour­neys. The agree­ment has an ini­tial term through to 2026 and will be auto­mat­i­cal­ly renewed for suc­ces­sive two-year peri­ods.

Rob Wiesen­thal, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Blade, said: “The addi­tion of Helijet’s sched­uled pas­sen­ger busi­ness will make Blade the largest Urban Air Mobil­i­ty ser­vice in North Amer­i­ca. Heli­jet, which has safe­ly flown more than 2.5 mil­lion pas­sen­gers over three decades of fly­ing in Cana­da, will con­tin­ue to own and oper­ate all Blade-des­ig­nat­ed air­craft in Cana­da and the U.S. Pacif­ic North­west.”

Melis­sa Tomkiel, Pres­i­dent of Blade, added: “This acqui­si­tion is a per­fect fit with Blade’s mis­sion to elim­i­nate trav­el fric­tion around the world. In 2019, over 2 mil­lion peo­ple trav­eled between key Heli­jet des­ti­na­tions using ground and fer­ry trans­porta­tion, which can take more than three hours longer than Heli­jet flights.

“Our tran­si­tion to low­er-cost, qui­et and emis­sion-free EVA should only serve to increase the num­ber of pas­sen­gers that trav­el between these loca­tions by air and the val­ue propo­si­tion to our fliers.”

This acqui­si­tion is con­sis­tent with Blade’s asset-light mod­el, where the Com­pa­ny organ­i­cal­ly cre­ates, or in this case pur­chas­es, valu­able routes on which by-the-seat heli­copter ser­vices have a strong val­ue propo­si­tion com­pared to cars and oth­er forms of trans­port, and con­tracts with incum­bent air­craft oper­a­tors to fly on its behalf.

Heli­jet is cur­rent­ly oper­at­ing at an annu­alised run-rate of about 50 per cent of its pre-pan­dem­ic rev­enues of approx­i­mate­ly US$15 mil­lion. How­ev­er, traf­fic is recov­er­ing quick­ly as Cana­da con­tin­ues its pan­dem­ic re-open­ing

While Blade is not acquir­ing any shares or own­er­ship in Heli­jet, it will have the right to acquire up to 49 per cent of Pacif­ic Heli­port Ser­vices. Heli­jet will con­tin­ue to oper­ate its cur­rent routes as usu­al, with Blade inte­grat­ing its book­ing and sales tech­nolo­gies to achieve greater reach into Helijet’s exist­ing and future route net­work.

Togeth­er, both com­pa­nies are cur­rent­ly review­ing new routes to serve Van­cou­ver, Seat­tle, Port­land and oth­er loca­tions along the Pacif­ic Northwest’s Cas­ca­dia cor­ri­dor. At the same time, air­craft fleet, book­ing and sales sys­tems, and fli­er expe­ri­ence upgrades are already on the draw­ing board.

Dan­ny Sit­nam, Pres­i­dent of Heli­jet, said: “Blade and Heli­jet are part­ner­ing to ensure our com­bined lead­er­ship in the ear­ly adop­tion of EVA on exist­ing routes in British Colum­bia, as well as on the new ser­vices Blade may launch in the future EVA tech­nolo­gies are going to change avi­a­tion in the same way that the jet engine rev­o­lu­tion­ized air trav­el 60 years ago.

“EVA will make Urban Air Mobil­i­ty more effi­cient, more sus­tain­able and more afford­able. In Blade, we have found a unique part­ner that shares our com­mit­ment to cus­tomer ser­vice and expe­ri­ence, safe­ty and inno­va­tion.”

“The trans­ac­tion gives Blade access to pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nals at con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed heli­ports in Van­cou­ver, Vic­to­ria and Nanaimo. This infra­struc­ture is essen­tial to offer Urban Air Mobil­i­ty solu­tions at scale,” not­ed Will Hey­burn, Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer of Blade. “Blade intends to make invest­ments in elec­tric charg­ing infra­struc­ture at each loca­tion in order to sup­port the future intro­duc­tion of EVA, while con­tin­u­ing to grow our offer­ing of afford­able flights using con­ven­tion­al heli­copters today.”