For anyone working towards a career in aerospace, there’s a new space to get your questions answered, and it’s right where you’d think it would be.
Created by Innovate Calgary and the University of Calgary, the Aerospace Innovation Hub (AIH) is now fully operational and open for researchers, startups and industry leaders. Formally called Banff Hall, the Innovation Hub is located at Calgary International Airport, pre-security in the Domestic Terminal, Departure Level.
Mike Attersall, AIH associate director, said the opening has been a long time coming.
“It’s been a lot of preparation for the past few weeks, but it’s also been a long time coming since the innovation hub was curated over a year ago in terms of planning for the space,” he said.
“This is going to be a centralized hub for the startup community to get them integrated with industry leaders, get them access to mentoring, and help them find pathways to funding, either through venture capital groups or non-diluted funding options that are out there.”
AIH Members will receive business advisory support, connections to the Hub’s corporate partners, including Calgary International Airport and WestJet, opportunities to pitch in front of investors such as Chapter.AI and UCeed and access to millions of dollars of prototyping equipment and labs, according to an Innovate Calgary-issued release.
For anyone creating a startup, getting the simple and sometimes complex questions answered can be difficult. Attersall said that AIH will be the place to get solutions.
“The hub is going to be that centralized space of subject matter experts, people who are doing the same thing, like-mindedness and just intelligence, all in one, one central area. It’s really going to help those startups go from early-stage startups to scaling up opportunities and getting to the point where they commercialize their product or idea.”
The hub being located inside the airport is no ironic coincidence. Instead, it is the right facility, a place where industry projects can be beta tested, Attersall said.
“YYC (airport) is really interested in early adoptions of new technologies, and then when you talk about all the airlines that use YYC as a hub for themselves, there are opportunities for them to work with us in partnership,” he said.
“WestJet, Lufthansa Technik, we’re already talking to those groups on how we can bring them new technologies, or what problems they’re seeing in industry that need to be solved.”
Following other partnerships and investments in Calgary in 2025, Lufthansa Technik head of public affairs and partnerships, Bonnie Granata Nunnari, said that the company truly believes in Alberta.
“When we look back at the investment we made then, it really just demonstrates that we believe strongly in community and giving back but Calgary, Alberta and Canada, who all invested in us,” she said.
“We want to put that trust and investment back into the community. We see this as the opportunity not just to support workforce development for the industry, but also to encourage curiosity and creativity for aerospace as well.”
One large space for innovators, one large impact for the Calgary tech scene
Another step forward for the city’s tech ecosystem, Harish Consul, Founder and CEO of Ocgrow Ventures, said that AIH will help attract more startups and global companies to Calgary.
“Calgary is rising very quickly globally in terms of an AI Innovation Center and Aerospace is a big vertical in that,” he said.
The hub will increase awareness and interest and provide a home for recruiting companies, Consul added.
“It’s incredibly positive for the city.”
Both Consul and Attersall said that success for the hub will be measured in ideas, connections and opportunity, with a key goal being the creation of an AIH-backed, successful startup.
“I would love to see a couple of hugely successful companies come out of the hub, that have started here, incubated here, scaled here, received investment funding here, and then they’re hiring and they scale out and migrate to much bigger offices around the world. So that’s, that’s obviously one big metric,” Consul said.
“The other (goal) is just creating more tech jobs in the city aerospace, attracting the youth into that sector.”
