A closer look
Seaplanes are notoriously maintenance-heavy and usually reserved for remote wilderness access, but in Vancouver, they operate on a high-frequency urban schedule. To maintain rapid turnarounds on the water, the floatplanes are stripped of unnecessary weight and equipped with robust electric or heavily optimized turbine engines. Pilots execute incredibly aggressive water taxiing maneuvers right in the middle of a busy harbor, docking with millimeter precision to offload impatient executives who view a twenty-minute flight as vastly superior to a three-hour ferry.
