Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Thank you to you and your colleagues for having me here today.
I would like to begin by acknowledging that I'm speaking to you from the traditional and unceded land of the Lekwungen-speaking people here in Victoria, British Columbia.
My name is Randy Wright. I am the president of Harbour Air Seaplanes and have been overseeing the operations, business development and overall growth of the company for the last two decades.
Harbour Air is the world's largest all-seaplane airline and has extensive operations throughout British Columbia, providing safe, reliable and convenient transportation to the travelling public. Our B.C.-born company flies 500,000 passengers a year on 35,000 flights across 14 scheduled destinations, and we employ over 400 people throughout the province. We provide a key link with the Cascadia corridor and are a central component in the connectivity to this crucial economic and innovation gateway.
Over the past 40 years, Harbour Air has become renowned for our award-winning safety culture, excellent customer service and commitment to sustainability and innovation.
As Harbour Air expands, we are committed to green destination development. In 2007, Harbour Air was North America's first airline to become fully carbon-neutral. In 2019, Harbour Air announced its partnership with Washington-based magniX, the company powering the electric aviation revolution. Together, we connect communities with clean, efficient and affordable electric air travel by converting Harbour Air's seaplanes into an all-electric fleet. We are uniquely positioned to be a leader in commercial electric flight due to our short flight missions, single-engine aircraft, low-altitude flights and access to renewable electric power.
After the successful development of our first ePlane in December 2019, we successfully flew the world's first fully electric aircraft. It was a historic event that made headlines around the world. This was a proud moment for Canada, and especially for our company. Since then, we have performed over 50 test flights, exploring improvements to overall performance and reliability. The second ePlane is now being built, which will act as our prototype and certification aircraft as we work with Transport Canada civil aviation toward flying the first ePlane for commercial use by the second quarter of 2024.
Our goal is to convert our entire 40-aircraft fleet to electric planes and become the first zero-carbon airline fleet in the world. Upon completion, we expect to reduce our carbon footprint and current noise pollution by 80%. As you can imagine, this is a large project with significant capital costs, and we are in discussions with all levels of government to ensure that the appropriate financial support is there to fully realize this initiative. Harbour Air has heavily invested and will continue to invest our own money in this initiative.
Ultimately, our hope is not only to transform our own fleet, but to see the adoption of clean technologies by other airlines and aviation partners throughout our industry. Achieving this outcome will require true collaboration between industry and government.