Virtual event outlines Canada’s work to introduce Advanced Air Mobility opportunities into its cities

Key updates about Canada’s work in the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) space was dis­cussed on Fri­day as part of a Dig­i­tal Open House vir­tu­al event organ­ised by Cana­di­an Air Mobil­i­ty.

Attend­ed by more than 80 peo­ple, it fea­tured three speak­ers who are help­ing to build plat­forms to expand on with­in the ecosys­tem — Teara Fras­er of Iskwew Air, Yolan­ka Wulff of the Com­mu­ni­ty Air Mobil­i­ty Ini­tia­tive (CAMI) and Michael Dyment of NEXA Cap­i­tal Part­ners.

The ses­sion was intro­duced by JR Ham­mond, Founder and CEO of Cana­di­an Air Mobil­i­ty, a for-prof­it arm of efforts in the coun­try to progress oper­a­tions, infra­struc­ture and invest­ments in AAM.

He said: “We are at a quin­tes­sen­tial point in our soci­ety where mon­u­men­tal forces are cre­at­ing deep, exten­sive piv­ots of exist­ing trans­porta­tion sys­tems. What is your role going to be in writ­ing the new trans­porta­tion nar­ra­tive of the future? How are your insights, expe­ri­ences and view­points going to con­tribute to a social­ly, envi­ron­men­tal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly viable path for this tech­nol­o­gy mov­ing for­ward. We are both the hur­dles and the solu­tion.”

Ham­mond start­ed by talk­ing about Van­cou­ver as an Air Mobil­i­ty cat­a­lyst, say­ing that it comes down to three main ingre­di­ents which gives it a real­ly strong plat­form to begin the first con­ver­sa­tions: Sus­tain­abil­i­ty, Oper­a­tional Excel­lence and Geog­ra­phy & Eco-sys­tem.

In April 2019, the city declared its Cli­mate Emer­gency Response — which allowed talks to begin about issues such as the decar­bon­i­sa­tion of trans­porta­tion sys­tems, and raised 53 spe­cif­ic action items the city has man­dat­ed to progress on in mov­ing the next phase of sus­tain­able trans­port.

Ham­mond went on to say that Van­cou­ver has the world’s largest sched­uled heli­copter provider, Heli­jet, locat­ed in the down­town area, which has been pro­vid­ing urban air mobil­i­ty solu­tions by trans­port­ing peo­ple and goods from the city to the sur­round­ing islands for near­ly 40 years.

“This gives us a very strong oper­a­tional plat­form of excel­lence, insight and exper­tise in expand­ing to the next phase of ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing in terms of sus­tain­abil­i­ty”, he said.

And final­ly, as Van­cou­ver is sur­round­ing by both water and moun­tains, Ham­mond con­clud­ed by say­ing it allows them to also apply AAM to spe­cif­ic use cas­es in the city, rather than hav­ing a ubiq­ui­tous solu­tion.

The results from the first fea­si­bil­i­ty study, which will focus on the ‘triple bot­tom line’ of eVTOL oper­a­tions in Cana­da, is expect­ed to be released at the end of Octo­ber. It focus­es on the envi­ron­men­tal, eco­nom­i­cal and social impact of trans­port­ing can­cer iso­topes from Van­cou­ver Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal to the Roy­al Jubilee Hos­pi­tal in British Columbi­a’s cap­i­tal, Vic­to­ria.

It is com­par­ing infor­ma­tion between trans­port­ing these iso­topes via tra­di­tion­al ground trans­porta­tion, heli­copter, and an eVTOL plat­form — with a focus on time-sav­ings for the rapid­ly decay­ing mate­r­i­al and emis­sions-sav­ing from using an eVTOL air­craft.

Ham­mond said: “Speed is of the utmost impor­tance as the radioiso­tope has a half-life of 110 min­utes. In oth­er words, with­in two hours it will decay to less than half its start­ing amount. By using VTOL tech­nol­o­gy to deliv­er the mate­r­i­al direct­ly from one hos­pi­tal to the oth­er, more of the iso­tope would arrive at the des­ti­na­tion, result­ing in reduced costs and a low­er pro­duc­tion bur­den. 

“Cer­tain organs, too, need rapid deliv­ery for trans­plant. Hearts last only four hours out­side the body; lungs four to six hours. In the event of a large-scale acci­dent with numer­ous injuries, blood and plas­ma may need to be trans­port­ed rapid­ly from one hos­pi­tal to anoth­er.

“Addi­tion­al­ly, cer­tain hos­pi­tals, espe­cial­ly in north­ern British Colum­bia, are pre­vent­ed from using heli­copters due to noise and com­mu­ni­ty con­cerns, where­as small­er, qui­eter eVTOL air­craft will like­ly obtain per­mis­sion for such oper­a­tions.”

Fras­er is the CEO and Founder of Iskwew Air, a com­pa­ny based out of Van­cou­ver Inter­na­tion­al Air­port which uses a twin-engine Piper PA-31 Nava­jo Chief­tain — named Sweet­grass War­rior — to pro­vide a 24-hour char­ter ser­vice through­out British Colum­bia.

It is also work­ing with the indige­nous LIFT Col­lec­tive to raise funds through a crowd­fund­ing cam­paign and fly care pack­ages to indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties locat­ed across the province.

Fras­er said that Iskwew Air is com­mit­ted to an eco-sys­tem ‘that is the next fron­tier for sus­tain­able air trans­porta­tion’ and asked how the indus­try can offer these new tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions to indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties.

She men­tioned three phas­es which the com­pa­ny is look­ing at. The first one aims to bring indige­nous knowl­edges togeth­er with mod­ern tech­nolo­gies to sup­port and uplift indige­nous land, sto­ry, sov­er­eign­ty and stew­ard­ship. The sec­ond is to con­tribute and col­lab­o­rate towards AAM, and the final phase would be to become an oper­a­tor.

“How can we be a part of this eco-sys­tem and co-cre­ate a future in avi­a­tion that looks dif­fer­ent to what it is now?”, she said.

“There has nev­er been a time more clear than right now where the oppor­tu­ni­ty exists to dis­rupt the exist­ing sys­tem, to re-build and co-cre­ate sys­tems that are bet­ter for humans and our world. I’m super excit­ed about being a part of this.”

Wulff is the Co-Exec­u­tive Direc­tor at the Com­mu­ni­ty Air Mobil­i­ty Ini­tia­tive (CMI), a non-prof­it organ­i­sa­tion which is ded­i­cat­ed to edu­cat­ing and sup­port­ing com­mu­ni­ties and local deci­sion mak­ers in the respon­si­ble inte­gra­tion of the third dimen­sion to meet our dai­ly trans­porta­tion.

She sug­gest­ed a crawl — walk — run approach when it comes to imple­ment­ing Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM), start­ing with pub­lic engage­ment on safe­ty and leg­is­la­tion — and the intro­duc­tion of pilot projects, demon­stra­tions and data gath­er­ing.

The next step would be to poten­tial­ly repur­pose exist­ing infra­struc­ture and devel­op new reg­u­la­tions, before scal­ing up new infra­struc­ture and then advo­cat­ing and safe­guard­ing pub­lic safe­ty.

She added that UAM would need to inte­grate with the met­ro­pol­i­tan, mul­ti-modal trans­porta­tion sys­tems and must serve the com­mu­ni­ties’ needs, say­ing: “It needs to demon­strate a huge lev­el of ben­e­fits over adverse impact.”

The final speak­er was Dyment, who is a Man­ag­ing Part­ner at NEXA Cap­i­tal Part­ners. He pre­dicts Van­cou­ver to be the first city to offer elec­tric flight, both with fixed wing and eVTOL capa­bil­i­ties, say­ing: “There is a lot of enthu­si­asm and already a pub­lic accep­tance for them.”

He added that he believes there will be five areas of UAM: Air­port Shuf­fle, On-Demand Air Taxis, Region­al (>200 miles) On-Demand, Cor­po­rate Cam­pus and Busi­ness Avi­a­tion, Medical/Emergency.

With the world’s pop­u­la­tion expect­ed to increase to near­ly 9.5 bil­lion over the next 30 years, Dyment said that this fac­tor will be a dri­ving force for most cities to adopt UAM oper­a­tions.

“Busi­ness­es which are going to be build­ing these air­craft will need to work togeth­er and become prof­itable. It is that prof­it that will help grow and sus­tain the mar­ket. For the most part, this [UAM] will be a very afford­able ser­vice once we get to high­er vol­umes,” he added.

The next Dig­i­tal Open House is being organ­ised by Cana­di­an Air Mobil­i­ty on Fri­day, 30th Octo­ber from 10am ‑12noon PT. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it https://www.canadianairmobility.com/home