Harbor Air Seaplanes said in a statement it completed its first direct point-to-point test flight flying 74 kilometers in 24 minutes from a terminal on the Fraser River near Vancouver International Airport to a bay near Victoria International Airport. “We’re really excited about this project and what it means for us and what it means for electric aviation to be able to continue to push it forward,” said Erika Holtz, who is leading the project for the company. Founded in 1982, Harbor Air uses small propeller planes to operate commercial flights between the Lower Mainland, Seattle, Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands and Whistler. In recent years it has turned its attention to becoming a leader in green urban mobility, which would eliminate the need to burn fossil fuels, a major contributor to climate change, for air travel. Yesterday, Harbor Air’s ePlane completed its first point-to-point flight powered by magniX! Congratulations to everyone who is making history once again! We are proud and honored to be part of the innovators in the Electric Aviation industry who are changing the world for the better. pic.twitter.com/HjS2oVdfZO —@magniX In December 2019, a pilot flew one of Harbor Air’s planes — a more than 60-year-old DHC-2 de Havilland Beaver floatplane equipped with a Seattle-based company’s magniX electric propulsion system — for three minutes over Richmond. Since then, the company has continued to improve the plane and conduct test flights in order to meet federally regulated criteria, showing that it can fly safely with passengers.
Watch the maiden test flight of the plane that aims to be the world’s first all-electric commercial aircraft.
Harbor Air’s new all-electric seaplane flew over the Fraser River for three minutes today on its first test flight. Holtz said the point-to-point flight this week was a major step forward. “Having this electric aircraft able to demonstrate that it can make scheduled flights brings us one step closer to being able to fully convert our entire fleet to electric,” he said. Early test flights were carried out without passengers. The ePlane will stay in Victoria for the weekend as part of an open house hosted by the BC Aviation Museum before returning to Richmond.
Battery weight and range
At the start of Harbor Air’s effort to develop an all-electric plane, aviation experts said Harbor Air would have to find a way to make the plane light enough to carry heavy lithium batteries and passengers without exceeds the airplane’s weight limits. Werner Antweiler, an economics professor at UBC’s Sauder School of Business who studies the commercialization of new technologies around mobility, said in 2021 that Harbor Air’s challenge would be to prove to regulators that the plane was safe to fly and the batteries strong enough to complete a short period of time. -flight transport with reserve force. In April 2021 Harbor Air partnered with Swiss company H55 to incorporate its battery technology to reduce weight and improve the distance the plane could fly. In December, Harbor Air announced that it had begun work on converting a second de Havilland Beaver into an all-electric plane, duplicating the original prototype. Other airlines are working on all-electric passenger planes. In 2019, Israeli company Eviation built a prototype nine-seat electric passenger and cargo plane called Alice, which uses the same propulsion system as Harbor Air’s Beaver. It is due to make its first test flight this summer. Weekend charge. pic.twitter.com/07SqFzw6tH —@EviationAero
