Harbour Air & magiX Make History With the Successful Flight of an All-Electric Commercial Aircraft

In the video you can hear the cheers go up as the plane takes off from Harbour Air Seaplanes terminal in Richmond, BC.

The people are cheering for good reason - they are cheering what Harbour Air CEO Greg McDougall called the “redefining of safety and innovation in the aviation and seaplane industry”.

Not only that, they are cheering for the hard work, dedication and overall chutzpah required to get an all-electric airplane up in the air. It takes a lot of R&D, a lot of testing, design work, innovation, project planning, funding and determination to achieve this sort of milestone. You have to have guts. You have to say “we’re going to do this’ and then figure it out from there. You have to know the future is zero emissions, believe you can get there, and rally a team of people behind you.

It’s an impressive feat, and the team at Foresight wanted to add our voices to the cheering squad.

Congratulations. The commercial airline industry needs innovators who understand that the future of aviation lies in electrification and low carbon fuels (such as biofuels, hydrogen or low carbon intensity gases).

From their website:

“The successful flight of the ePlane, a six-passenger DHC-2 de Havilland Beaver magnified by a 750-horsepower (560 kW) magni500 propulsion system, took place on the Fraser River at Harbour Air Seaplanes terminal in Richmond (YVR South) on the morning of Dec 10, 2019. The plane was piloted by Harbour Air CEO and founder Greg McDougall. This historic flight signifies the start of the third era in aviation – the electric age.”

Here’s the video (in case you want to cheer along):