Back in mid-September, De Havilland Canada made a huge announcement, revealing that they’ll be
building a brand new aircraft manufacturing facility just 30 minutes east of Calgary.
The planned site for this is just south of the Trans-Canada Highway,
roughly halfway in between Chestermere and Strathmore in Wheatland County. This will
include the construction of a new airport, a quote, “state of the art aircraft assembly
facility”, parts manufacturing and distribution centres, a maintenance,
repair and overhaul centre, and a De Havilland Canada museum, among many other things.
There are a few hurdles to work through first,
with one of those being the approval process from Wheatland County itself.
If all goes according to plan, construction could begin as soon as late 2023 with the first
buildings opening in 2025. The project should take approximately 10-15 years to fully complete,
creating at least 1500 jobs, and the whole site will be called “De Havilland Field”.
The facility will be the final assembly site for the recently-announced DHC-515 Firefighting
aircraft, as well as the DHC-6 Twin Otter, and the Dash 8-400. Those last two types aren’t
in production at the moment, but De Havilland Canada says they’re reviewing the Twin Otter to
ensure it’s, quote, “meeting market demand”, and that’ll be followed by the Dash 8-400.
Since De Havilland Canada officially left Toronto’s Downsview Airport few months ago, there
had been quite a bit of speculation as to where they would relocate their production facilities.
They do have a parts manufacturing facility in Victoria as well as an existing presence at
Calgary International Airport, refurbishing older CL-215s and the final assembly of Twin Otters.
Until De Havilland Field opens, they say the current Calgary production facilities will
be sufficient for the Twin Otters and some of the early DHC-515s.
Now this news did come out a little while ago, but I wanted to wait until they released
their concept plan document for some more specific details, so let’s take a look!
The airport itself is the central part of this, and according to the document,
it’ll have one runway that’s oriented roughly 15 degrees from true north, with a length
of 6,698 feet or 2,041 metres. The actual De Havilland Canada facilities will be located in
the northeast portion, while the rest of the land would be available for other aviation companies.
For Calgary’s weather, that positioning does make sense,
keeping in mind that Calgary International’s runways are oriented
north to south with crosswind runways for the Chinook winds from the west.
Speaking of Calgary International, it is kind of interesting that they chose
not to build this on any existing land there, considering there’s a
decent chunk of unused real estate along the entire east side of the new runway.
It’s safe to say that land is much, much cheaper out here though, and there’s a lot more space to
work with, not to mention the lack of traffic at what is essentially their own bespoke airport.
At YYC, that land east of the new runway makes up just over two square kilometres roughly,
but it is constrained by 36th Street and the rest of northeast Calgary. The
location of De Havilland Field, at least in the concept plan,
would make use of almost six square kilometres, with tons of space for expansion.
Now, given the long-term scope of this project,
it’s pretty clear that they’re building this for the future. Obviously the return of Dash
8-400 production is still to be determined, and there are even a few “white-tails”, that is,
planes that were built but not taken up by customers, sitting around at YYC.
A project of this scale means they’re clearly planning for a big ramp-up in production,
and something that might get them to the 1990s level of production in Downsview,
could be a re-engined Dash 8.
That’s something they’re actually working on with Pratt and Whitney Canada, with a hybrid-electric
Dash 8-100 flight demonstrator hopefully flying in 2024. Late last year, they also signed an MoU
with sustainable aircraft developer ZeroAvia to develop a hydrogen-electric engine for
the Dash 8-400. These could be built for both new aircraft and retrofitted onto existing airframes.
An interview between De Havilland Canada’s CEO and the Calgary Herald would support their building
some modified Dash 8 variants, as he said that, quote “I can guarantee you that our goal and the
mandate was given to me [is] to get back into production for all three of those platforms (and
here’s the key part) and maybe some derivatives of some other ones”. Dash 8-300 neo confirmed.
Now making use of this open space for a whole new airport is one thing, but another thing to
consider is where it sits within Calgary’s Class C Airspace. This is all controlled
airspace that basically radiates out from Calgary International like an upside down layer cake,
with altitudes below a certain point being considered outside that airspace and uncontrolled.
At the moment, the site of De Havilland Field sits below the 5,500’ to 12,500’ ring, much
like Springbank Airport does on the opposite side of the city. Depending on how busy De Havilland
Field get, the airspace might not require much of a redesign on Nav Canada’s part, but if it were to
become a towered airport like the renderings show, then it could get a bit more complex.
Another thing mentioned in the planning document, at least as I understand it, is that the airport
will be built to accommodate, quote “an Aircraft Group Number IV aircraft”. According to Transport
Canada, that’s an aircraft with a wingspan of 36 metres up to 52 metres. Just for reference, a 767
has a wingspan of 48 metres, so this will not be a small general aviation airport by any stretch.
That could open up the possibility of using the airport as an alternative to Calgary
International for passenger flights, much like Paine Field in Washington State serves as now.
If there were enough interest from a low cost carrier and a terminal could be built,
some passengers might be willing to drive the extra distance.
The issue is that the runway length of barely 6,700 feet is not a lot for a 737
at Calgary’s elevation. So, at least at this stage, De Havilland Field being used
as a low-cost airport for Calgary doesn’t seem so likely to happen. That’s not the
intended purpose of the airport anyway, but it could’ve been an interesting use of it.
One last thing I wanted to mention is that any new airport will need its own identifier, whether
that’s a one issued by Transport Canada, or by the ICAO. ICAO Codes for Canadian Airports start with
either a CY or a CZ, so as appropriate as it would be, CDHC might not work. CYDH is already taken by
a heliport in Ottawa, so, as an identifier for De Havilland Field, CZDH would be very fitting.
This really is one of those once-in-a-lifetime
projects that’s going to be amazing to see come to life, and I know I’m
going to be watching the development of De Havilland Field with great interest.
Thank you so much for watching, and to one of my channel members, Greg,
for letting me use some of his shots of the actual site as it is today. See you next time!