Great Lakes Helicopter expanding operations with new hangar

A new project is underway at the Region of Waterloo International Airport. CTV’s Karis Mapp reports.

Great Lakes Helicopter is taking their business to new heights.

The company broke ground on a new hangar at the Region of Waterloo International Airport on Tuesday, where they have been operating for almost a decade.

“Great Lakes Helicopter started as a flight school. It expanded into agricultural services, utility services, tourism across Southwestern Ontario,” explained Chad McIntosh, the company’s co-owner and managing director. “We needed more storage space, so we built the first hangar. The second hangar is going just beside it and it’s going to be a fair bit bigger.”

The fleet currently includes 20 aircrafts but, with the expansion, they can now plan for future growth.

“We have seven more on order, ranging anywhere from four to 10-seaters,” McIntosh explained. “[We’re] just trying to meet the increase in demand for agriculture spraying, our flight school, charters and tourism.”

The extra space will also allow Great Lakes Helicopter to bring all their operations under one roof.

“We’re going to be moving our maintenance facility, which is located right at the airport, over to this facility,” McIntosh said.

The new hangar also marks the continued partnership between the company and the airport.

“There’s a lot of hoops to jump through to get buildings up, fuel storage, all that stuff,” said McIntosh. “They agreed to a 20-year lease on this land which was amazing because we are investing a lot of money here.”

Future flight plans

Great Lakes Helicopter is one of the many collaborations happening at the Region of Waterloo International Airport.

“We’re really seeing a growth spurt right now with corporations moving in, businesses wanting to build additional hangar facilities and lots more flight activity,” said airport director Chris Wood. “This is one of the busiest airports in Canada and the second busiest airport in Ontario, behind Toronto Pearson.”

The majority of business, he noted, was not from commercial flights.

The airport currently has more than 250 planes stored on site, along with flight schools and other aviation-based organizations.

“There’s a company here that is interested in doing some scheduled passenger work, still early days on that, but we are confident there will be announcements on additional scheduled services here in the future,” Wood said.