Canada Is Building an Entire Airport Just to Make One Plane

Описание: A finished airplane can't leave a factory on a truck — it flies out. So every real aircraft factory is also an airport. On 1,500 acres of prairie east of Calgary, in Wheatland County, Alberta, De Havilland Canada is building one from scratch: De Havilland Field, with its own 6,700-foot runway, control tower and international airport code. The aircraft at the centre of it is the DHC-515 — the only purpose-built water bomber in the world, and a plane that Europe and Canada are now lining up years in advance to buy.

This video explains how the DHC-515 works (it scoops over 6,000 litres of water from a lake in about 12 seconds and can deliver roughly 700,000 litres in a day), why global demand has exploded as wildfire seasons worsen, and why De Havilland had to build an entirely new home — after losing its historic 94-year base at Downsview in Toronto, which is being redeveloped into housing. It covers the European order of 22 aircraft for six countries, the Canadian provincial orders, the draft Canada-EU plan for up to 50 aircraft, and the honest caveats: the field will build three aircraft (not one), the $1.6 billion figure is the European aircraft contract and not the airport's cost, and the whole thing is a privately financed, 10-to-15-year bet carried by one family-owned company with almost no government subsidy.