From CBC News – link to source story

CEO Greg McDougall says COVID-19 pushed goal to carry passengers on e-plane back a year

Chad Pawson · CBC News · Jan 24, 2021

A Vancouver seaplane company says its retro-fitted all electric airplane is set to take to the skies for more test flights this year, as it pushes forward with its plans to make commercial air travel cheaper and greener.

“There’s no wavering in our confidence and determination and interest in getting this done,” said Harbour Air CEO Greg McDougall.

Founded by McDougall in 1982, Harbour Air uses small propeller planes to fly commercial flights between the Lower Mainland, Seattle, Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands and Whistler.

In the last few years it has turned its attention to becoming a leader in green urban mobility, which would do away with the need to burn fossil fuels for air travel.

In December 2019, McDougall flew one of Harbour Air’s planes, a more than 60-year-old  DHC-2 de Havilland Beaver float plane, which had been outfitted with a Seattle-based company’s electric propulsion system, for three minutes over Richmond B.C.

Watch Video – link to CBC Player

Harbour Air joined with Seattle-based company MagniX in early 2019 to design the e-plane’s engine, which was powered by NASA-approved lithium-ion batteries that were also used on the International Space Station.

At the time, based on the success of that inaugural flight, McDougall had hoped to be using the plane to fly passengers on its routes, such as between downtown Vancouver and downtown Victoria, by the end of this year.

Now, that timeline has been pushed back at least one year due to the pandemic.

“It’s progressing, not as quickly as we hoped due to COVID, but we are getting back on track with the testing program,” said McDougall.

Harbour Air has to prove to Transport Canada that its e-plane is as safe as its other conventional planes to allow it to fly with passengers.

McDougall says Ottawa has approved a new permit to allow the company to continue with test flights this year, which will be used to improve the plane and all its components.

New batteries

Despite the setback from the pandemic, the company stands to benefit from advances in battery technology.

It has partnered with a new company for a different battery that is lighter and provides more power than what was used a year ago.

Analysts of the sector say the success of companies like Harbour Air to fly all-electric in a commercially successful way is completely dependent upon the energy system.

“Technologically, the real challenge is to make the batteries lighter,” said Werner Antweiler, a professor of economics at UBC’s Sauder School of Business who studies the commercialization of novel technologies around mobility.

The problem with lithium batteries is they are heavy, which means the plane Harbour Air is using them on quickly meets its weight capacity even without passengers.

McDougall says battery technology is advancing quickly and he expects them to be even lighter and more powerful, as his project gets closer to flying commercially.

Antweiler says Harbour Air is in the “sweet spot” in the industry as its flights are short, meaning battery technology as it stands today makes the project viable.

“That is an ideal application because the batteries won’t get you any farther than that range,” he said about the length of flights Harbour Air does.

Getting on an all-electric jetliner to fly across Canada, he says, is decades away.

A commitment to become net zero carbon by 2040

Sustainability has been a key area of focus for Harbour Air, as the company prepares to mark the one year anniversary of its ePlane flight (the world’s first flight of a fully electric commercial aircraft).

Thirty-one companies have now joined The Climate Pledge, a commitment co-founded by Amazon and Global Optimism to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement 10 years early

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Dec. 9, 2020–Today, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Global Optimism announced that 13 new signatories—Atos, Brooks, Canary Wharf Group, Coca-Cola European Partners, ERM, Groupe Seb France, Harbour Air, ITV, Microsoft, Neste, Rubicon, Unilever, and Vaude—have joined The Climate Pledge, a commitment to be net-zero carbon by 2040, a decade ahead of the Paris Agreement’s goal of 2050.

Signatories to The Climate Pledge agree to:

• Measure and report greenhouse gas emissions on a regular basis;
• Implement decarbonization strategies in line with the Paris Agreement through real business changes and innovations, including efficiency improvements, renewable energy, materials reductions, and other carbon emission elimination strategies;
• Neutralize any remaining emissions with additional, quantifiable, real, permanent, and socially-beneficial offsets to achieve net-zero annual carbon emissions by 2040.

“Last year, Amazon and Global Optimism co-founded The Climate Pledge to encourage companies to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement ten years early. Today, we have exciting news: 13 more companies, including Unilever and Microsoft, are joining this commitment to confront climate change together and save the planet for future generations,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “There are now 31 companies from around the world that have signed The Climate Pledge, and collectively we are sending an important signal to the market that there is significant and rapidly growing demand for technologies that can help us build a zero-carbon economy.”

Harbour Air

Named one of Canada’s best managed companies for 11 consecutive years, Harbour Air has been calculating and offsetting the airline’s carbon footprint for over a decade. In 2007, the regional airline became the world’s first and only carbon-neutral airline. Since then, Harbour Air has offset 100% of its emissions associated with seaplane fuel use and corporate operations. Last year, Harbour Air took its commitment to sustainability one step further and on December 10, 2019, the airline successfully converted and achieved the world’s first flight of a fully electric commercial aircraft. The ePlane is now being certified and approved by the FAA and Transport Canada—a critical next step in Harbour Air’s goals to become the first fully electric commercial airline.

“Being a sustainable and responsible corporate citizen is not only embedded into our organizational values, but, I believe, is vital to our success in the community,” said Greg McDougall, Harbour Air founder and CEO. “As the world’s first and only carbon-neutral airline, we are proud of our industry leadership towards sustainability. We look forward to joining The Climate Pledge community and supporting other organizations and industry leaders such as Amazon, Global Optimism, and other signatories to reach net-zero carbon by 2040.”

“The Paris Agreement set out a unifying roadmap for all countries and all people to address the climate crisis by taking action,” said Christiana Figueres, the UN’s former climate change chief and Global Optimism founding partner. “By joining The Climate Pledge, signatories are not just making a statement of commitment to the future, they are setting a pathway to significant actions and investments that will create jobs, spur innovation, regenerate the natural environment, and help consumers to buy more sustainable products starting now.”

For more information on The Climate Pledge, visit www.theclimatepledge.com.

From Harbour Air Seaplanes

2 June 2020

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Daily flights now operating between Vancouver, Richmond (YVR South), Victoria, Nanaimo, Sechelt, Salt Spring Island and Maple Bay 

Over the past 38 years, Harbour Air has become a vital transportation link for coastal British Columbia. During the past couple of months, we have also seen the impact our service reductions have had on the communities we support. We know that “returning to operations” is not a “return to normal.” As we move forward, we are working hard to ensure that we are providing the safe, essential travel services you’ve come to expect from Harbour Air. 

The safety of our employees, their families, our passengers and our communities is of the utmost importance to us. Please rest assured, we have adopted stringent safety measures that exceed both Transport Canada and Health Canada’s recommendations. We have introduced vigilant cleaning and physical distancing protocols, suspended scheduled flights and reduced our operations across the Province. Below is an update on flights and services currently available from Harbour Air, as well as an overview of our enhanced safety measures. 

Scheduled Flight Services 

Daily flight schedules have resumed for many of our routes. Although the frequency of flights is still limited, we’re continuing to monitor demand and will update schedules as available.  

Now flying:

• Vancouver/Victoria 
• Vancouver/Nanaimo
• Vancouver/Sechelt 
• Nanaimo/Sechelt 
• Vancouver/Salt Spring Island 
• Richmond (YVR South)/Victoria 
• Richmond (YVR South)/Nanaimo 
• Vancouver/Maple Bay 

Resuming soon:

• Vancouver/Sechelt (direct flights) – resuming June 4
• Vancouver/Tofino – resuming June 5
• Richmond (YVR/South)/Sechelt – resuming June 8
• Vancouver/Comox – resuming June 29

From magniX

The inaugural flight of the all-electric Cessna 208B Grand Caravan marks another milestone ushering in the new era of electric aviation

MOSES LAKE, Wash., May 28, 2020 /CNW/ — magniX, the company powering the electric aviation revolution, and AeroTEC, a leading independent company focused on aerospace testing, engineering and certification, today announced the successful flight of an all-electric Cessna Grand Caravan 208B. The successful flight of the eCaravan, magnified by a 750-horsepower (560 kW) magni500 propulsion system, took place at the AeroTEC Flight Test Center at the Grant County International Airport (KMWH) in Moses Lake, Washington this morning. As the world’s largest all-electric commercial aircraft, this is a significant milestone in disrupting the transportation industry and accelerating the electric aviation revolution.

“The iconic Caravan has been a workhorse of industry moving people and transporting goods on short routes for decades,” said Roei Ganzarski, CEO of magniX. “This first flight of the eCaravan is yet another step on the road to operating these middle-mile aircraft at a fraction of the cost, with zero emissions, from and to smaller airports. These electric commercial aircraft will enable the offering of flying services of people and packages in a way previously not possible.”

“I’m proud of the pioneering work performed by our engineers, technicians and flight test team,” said Lee Human, President and CEO of AeroTEC. “There’s no roadmap for testing and certifying electric aircraft – this is a new frontier and AeroTEC is on the front lines developing the processes and best practices that will pave the way for electric aviation.”

The flying of the eCaravan serves as another critical step in the certification and approval process of the magni500 propulsion system, enabling future conversions of additional aircraft to magniX’s all-electric propulsion technology.

The historic flight was captured via livestream and watched by people around the world. Following the flight, a virtual press conference was held in the Test Center’s hangar. To view images, recording of the virtual press conference and videos of the first flight of the world’s largest all-electric aircraft, please visit: https://magnix.aero/ecaravan/. 

From Harbour Air Seaplanes

Daily flights now operating between Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Sechelt and Salt Spring Island

Over the past 38 years, Harbour Air has become a vital transportation link for coastal British Columbia. During the last few weeks, we have also seen the impact our service reductions have had on the communities we support. We know that “returning to operations” is not a “return to normal.” As we look towards the future, we are working hard to ensure that we are providing the safe, essential travel services you’ve come to expect from Harbour Air.

The safety of our employees, their families and our communities is of the utmost importance to us. Please rest assured, we have adopted stringent safety measures that exceed both Transport Canada and Health Canada’s recommendations. We have introduced vigilant cleaning and physical distancing protocols, suspended scheduled flights and reduced our operations across the Province.

Although we will continue to monitor the demand for all routes, daily flight schedules are now in effect for several routes.

Now flying:

• Vancouver/Victoria 
• Vancouver/Nanaimo
• Vancouver/Sechelt 
• Nanaimo/Sechelt 
• Vancouver/Salt Spring Island 

Resuming soon:

• Richmond (YVR South)/Victoria – resuming June 1
• Richmond (YVR South)/Nanaimo – resuming June 1
• Vancouver/Maple Bay – resuming June 1
• Vancouver/Tofino – resuming June 5
• Vancouver/Comox – resuming June 29

View Flight Schedules

These flights are currently available to book online or through our reservations team. Parcel Express shipping services are also available on all flights. For more information, contact us by email  anytime or by phone from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm PST daily. Click here to view the opening hours for each terminal. 

Prioritizing Passenger Safety

For the safety of our flight crew and private flight passengers, we will continue to enforce the following conditions:

• All ground and flight crew will have their temperature checked upon arriving and departing at the workplace.
• Passengers will be required to complete a health declaration form before travel and may have their temperature checked using a no-touch thermometer.
• Passengers will be provided with gloves and masks, required to be worn for the entire flight and while in terminal.
• Our front line team may deny boarding to any passenger whom they believe may be unfit to travel.
• We will continue to follow the stringent cleaning and sanitation protocols in place and provide ample access to hand sanitizer in all terminals as well as pre- and post- flight.
• We will offer no touch payment, having increased our tap payment limit to $250.
• We have installed plastic dividers at check-in and visual markers in terminals to enforce physical distancing.

With these measures in place, please be assured that flying the coast is still, and will forever be, our passion.

We are eager to start operating all of our routes and see all of the faces that have supported us over the years, however just like every other business right now, it may be some time before we are able to do so.  For that, and for the people and communities that have relied upon our service for years, we apologize and hope you understand. We will continue to diligently monitor passenger demand and communicate as soon as we can add more flights and get back to full operations.

From Harbour Air Seaplanes Blog

22 Apr, 2020

While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact our communities, businesses and operations, we remain optimistic and focused on the future.

As part of our vision, we’ve always believed in doing the right thing for our people, our communities and for our environment. 2020 may be off to a challenging start, but it has also highlighted incredible resiliency, adaptability and innovation. For us, that means focusing on meaningful projects that will have a positive impact for generations.

After the successful first flight of our ePlane this past December our incredible maintenance team along with our partners at magniX have continued to forge ahead with the certification process. Working closely with the federal and provincial governments, we are thrilled to have completed additional test flights of the ePlane and proven enhanced range performance.

As of April 20, 2020, the following work has been completed:

• Successful first flight: December 10, 2019
• 3 additional flight tests
• System upgrades
• Initial data analysis suggests extended range
• Friday, April 17: Flight Test Plan approval for the take-off, cruise and extended range performance testing
• Monday, April 20: First flight under new extended permit (20 minute flight with 20 minute reserve)

Next Steps:

With the Flight Test Plan approval, over the next thirty days our team will continue to perform ePlane test flights as part of the ongoing certification process. Stay tuned as we are getting to the fun part and will be able to provide more performance updates soon.

From Harbour Air Seaplanes

COVID-19 UPDATE: Vancouver/Victoria flights resume Apr 27

 21 Apr, 2020

COVID-19 UPDATE: Harbour Air’s daily flights between Vancouver and Victoria resume on April 27

Through weeks of uncertainty due to COVID-19, and with safety as our top value at Harbour Air, we have been monitoring the situation closely, making difficult and necessary decisions to support the health and safety of our teams, passengers and communities. 

As a trusted, essential service, we understand and have seen the impact this decision has on the communities we service. To ensure we do not leave anyone stranded, we continue to offer private flights, freight and government support services as required. We have introduced vigilant cleaning and social distancing protocols, suspended scheduled flights and reduced our operations across the Province.

Recently, when alternate transportation options temporarily shutdown access to our communities, we resumed flights between Nanaimo, Sechelt and Vancouver to support essential travel for those who now had limited options. Our freight services continue to support the supply chain process, supporting deliveries of food, materials and products to neighbours, businesses and facilities in need (click here for information on our Parcel Express services).

Over the past 38 years, Harbour Air has become a vital transportation link to coastal British Columbia. We know that “returning to operations” is not a “return to normal.” As we begin to look towards the future, we are working hard to ensure that we are providing the safe, essential travel services you’ve come to expect from Harbour Air.

As of Monday, April 27, daily flights between downtown Vancouver and downtown Victoria will resume.

The following flights are currently available to book online or through our reservations team. Please note, we are available by email (reservation@harbourair.com) anytime or by phone (Mon-Fri, 10am-2pm PST): 

DOWNTOWN VANCOUVER & VICTORIA: FLIGHT DEPARTURES

Vancouver	Victoria	Days
8:00am	9:00am	Mon-Fri
4:00pm	5:00pm	Mon-Fri
10:00am	11:00am	Sat
2:30pm	3:30pm	Sun

Please note, these flights continue to support essential travel and front-line workers. While the situation remains dynamic, with new information received each day, if you do not need to travel, please stay home.

Prioritizing Passenger Safety
We believe we are the safest way to travel. Offering quick, frequent flights, limited exposure and  vigilant cleaning and sanitization measures. For the safety of our flight crew and private flight passengers, we will continue to enforce the following conditions:

• Flights will be completed utilizing only our larger (14 seat) Otter aircraft.
• Available seating will be reduced to 40%, which will allow for on board distancing.
• All ground and flight crew will have their temperature checked upon arriving and departing at the workplace.
• Passengers will be required to complete a health declaration form before travel and have their temperature checked using a no-touch thermometer.
• Passengers will be provided with gloves and masks, required to be worn for the entire flight.
• Our front line team will also deny boarding to any passenger whom they believe may be unfit to travel.
• We will continue to follow the stringent cleaning and sanitation protocols in place and provide ample access to hand sanitizer in all terminals as well as pre and post flight.
• We will offer no touch payment, having increased our tap payment limit to $250.
• We have installed plastic dividers at check-in and visual markers in terminals to enforce social distancing.

For the latest updates on COVID-19, please refer to Health Canada or the BC Centre for Disease Control’s websites:

• https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection.html
• http://www.bccdc.ca/health-info/diseases-conditions/coronavirus-(novel)

From Harbour Air Seaplanes 15 April 2020

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COVID-19 UPDATE:

Through weeks of uncertainty due to COVID-19, and with safety as our top value at Harbour Air, we have been monitoring the situation closely, making difficult and necessary decisions to support the health and safety of our teams, passengers and communities. 

As a trusted, essential service, we understand and have seen the impact this decision has on the communities we service. To ensure we do not leave anyone stranded, we continue to offer private flights, freight and government support services as required. We have introduced vigilant cleaning and social distancing protocols, suspended scheduled flights and reduced our operations across the Province.

Recently, when alternate transportation options temporarily shutdown access to our communities, we resumed flights between Nanaimo, Sechelt and Vancouver to support essential travel for those who now had limited options. Our freight services continue to support the supply chain process, supporting deliveries of food, materials and products to neighbours, businesses and facilities in need (click here for information on our Parcel Express services).

Over the past 38 years, Harbour Air has become a vital transportation link to coastal British Columbia. We know that “returning to operations” is not a “return to normal.” As we begin to look towards the future, we are working hard to ensure that we are providing the safe, essential travel services you’ve come to expect from Harbour Air.

As of Monday, April 27, daily flights between downtown Vancouver and downtown Victoria will resume.

The following flights are currently available to book online or through our reservations team. Please note, we are available by email (reservation@harbourair.com) anytime or by phone (Mon-Fri, 10am-2pm PST): 

DOWNTOWN VANCOUVER & VICTORIA: FLIGHT DEPARTURES
Vancouver	Victoria	Days
8:00am	9:00am	Mon-Fri
4:00pm	5:00pm	Mon-Fri
10:00am	11:00am	Sat
2:30pm	3:30pm	Sun

Please note, these flights continue to support essential travel and front-line workers. While the situation remains dynamic, with new information received each day, if you do not need to travel, please stay home.

Prioritizing Passenger Safety
For the safety of our flight crew and private flight passengers, we will continue to enforce the following conditions:

• Flights will be completed utilizing our larger DeHavilland Otter aircraft and available seating will be reduced to 40%, which will allow for on board distancing.
• All ground and flight crew will have their temperature checked upon arriving and departing at the workplace.
• Passengers will be required to complete a health declaration form before travel and have their temperature checked using a no-touch thermometer.
• Passengers will be provided with gloves and masks, required to be worn for the entire flight.
• Our front line team will also deny boarding to any passenger whom they believe may be unfit to travel.
• We will continue to follow the stringent cleaning and sanitation protocols in place and provide ample access to hand sanitizer in all terminals as well as pre and post flight.