Helijet Places Firm Order with Beta Technologies for First Passenger Service eVTOL Aircraft in Canada

Heli­jet, North America’s largest and long-stand­ing heli­copter oper­a­tor, has placed a firm order to pur­chase Beta Tech­nolo­gies ALIA eVTOL air­craft, reports a press release. This is a sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) in Cana­da.

The release explains, “Heli­jet will inte­grate the Beta-designed air­craft into its exist­ing net­work of heli­copter ser­vices, pro­vid­ing qui­eter, low­er cost, sus­tain­able air trans­porta­tion for trav­ellers in south­west­ern British Colum­bia (BC) and the Pacif­ic North­west.”

It con­tin­ues, “The elec­tric aircraft’s ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing capa­bil­i­ty will also have tremen­dous poten­tial to enhance Helijet’s pro­vi­sion of emer­gency response, air ambu­lance and organ trans­fer ser­vices in the Low­er Main­land, as well as sup­port rur­al and remote com­mu­ni­ties that do not have access to afford­able and con­ve­nient air ser­vices.” 

Heli­jet Pres­i­dent and CEO, Dan­ny Sit­nam, and Beta Sales Direc­tor, Skye Cara­petyan, made the announce­ment with British Colum­bia Pre­mier, David Eby, at Helijet’s Vic­to­ria Har­bour Heli­port.

The ALIA eVTOL is a five-pas­sen­ger and pilot con­fig­ured air­craft, cur­rent­ly in advanced flight stan­dards devel­op­ment towards com­mer­cial reg­u­la­to­ry cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in 2026. It will be avail­able for pri­vate and com­mer­cial ser­vice short­ly after­wards. 

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Helijet’s deci­sion to become Beta’s first com­mer­cial pur­chas­er from Cana­da (the num­ber of air­craft is unknown), is part­ly due to the com­pa­ny’s inten­tion “to cer­ti­fy the air­craft for IFR (instru­ment flight rules) oper­a­tions and its con­sid­er­a­tion to build an indus­tri­al base in Cana­da. Beta has already begun to grow its pres­ence across the coun­try with an R&D facil­i­ty based out of the Mon­tréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau Inter­na­tion­al Air­port.” 

Sit­nam remarked, “We are com­mit­ted to intro­duc­ing and inte­grat­ing zero-emis­sion, ver­ti­cal lift tech­nolo­gies and relat­ed ground/building infra­struc­ture in the com­mu­ni­ties we serve and look for­ward to trans­form­ing our cur­rent heli­port infra­struc­ture to meet future urban air mobil­i­ty ver­ti­port stan­dards.” 

Pre­mier Eby not­ed the Province of BC is com­mit­ted to embrac­ing and sup­port­ing sus­tain­able avi­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy, as well as relat­ed infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties with­in the province. 

Eby com­ment­ed, “We con­grat­u­late Heli­jet on their excit­ing news and look for­ward to British Colum­bia becom­ing a leader in the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) sec­tor.” 

Dan­ny Sit­nam

Heli­jet is a found­ing mem­ber of the Cana­di­an Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (CAAM), the Nation­al Organ­i­sa­tion for AAM in Cana­da. CAAM has cre­at­ed a 100+ mem­ber ecosys­tem com­prised of indus­try, acad­e­mia, cap­i­tal and gov­ern­ment mem­bers both nation­al­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly. 

Key stake­hold­ers of CAAM include the Nation­al Research Coun­cil of Cana­da, Air Cana­da Car­go, CAE, Iskwew Air­lines, InDro Robot­ics, Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia, TransLink, BC Avi­a­tion Coun­cil, Uni­ver­si­ty of Vic­to­ria, BC Min­istry of Trans­porta­tion, TELUS, Trans­port Cana­da, Cana­di­an Hydro­gen and Fuel Cell Asso­ci­a­tion, and Aer­i­al Evo­lu­tion Asso­ci­a­tion of Cana­da. 

JR Ham­mond, CAAM Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, com­ment­ed, “Helijet’s pur­chase of Beta Tech­nolo­gies Alia air­craft is an avi­a­tion mile­stone for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty in Cana­da. With its mature air trav­el mar­ket demo­graph­ic and exist­ing chal­lenges for con­ven­tion­al trans­porta­tion between Van­cou­ver Island and the Low­er Main­land, south­ern British Colum­bia pro­vides an excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate the com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty of AAM.”

Accord­ing to NEXA Advisors/UAM Geo­mat­ics, over the next 15 to 20 years, Greater Van­cou­ver has the poten­tial to serve approx­i­mate­ly 4.2 mil­lion pas­sen­gers using eVTOL air­craft and gen­er­ate USD2.1 bil­lion in new AAM busi­ness activ­i­ty. Beta’s selec­tion as the first provider of eVTOL air­craft to a Cana­di­an air ser­vices oper­a­tor marks anoth­er mile­stone for the Ver­mont-based com­pa­ny. 

The release states, “The com­pa­ny has con­duct­ed qual­i­ta­tive eval­u­a­tion flights with the FAA, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Army, com­plet­ed mul­ti­ple thou­sand-mile-plus mis­sions across the U.S., util­is­ing its own charg­ing infra­struc­ture, and recent­ly opened its 188,500 sq. ft pro­duc­tion and assem­bly facil­i­ty, the first full-scale man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty for elec­tric air­craft in the Unit­ed States. Ear­li­er this fall, the elec­tric aero­space com­pa­ny also flew one of its pro­to­type air­craft across the bor­der into Mon­tre­al, mark­ing the first time a bat­tery elec­tric air­craft has land­ed in the city.” Beta has orders from cus­tomers includ­ing UPS, Air New Zealand, BLADE, and Unit­ed Ther­a­peu­tics, as well as con­tracts with the U.S. Army and Air Force. 

Mean­while, Heli­jet has short­list­ed oth­er, but to date unnamed, air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers design­ing and devel­op­ing eVTOL air­craft for AAM ecosys­tems. The com­pa­ny is lead­ing the devel­op­ment of Canada’s first com­mer­cial ver­ti­port at its down­town Van­cou­ver water­front heli­port, which would con­nect AAM users to an inter­modal trans­porta­tion hub pro­vid­ing road, marine, air and rail access through­out the region. 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.beta.team/

https://helijet.com/scheduled-airline/

(Images: Beta Tech­nolo­gies)