Katherine Ayre loves to fly, but that’s only part of the reason she’s an aviation lawyer. She sees the potential of aviation to connect underserviced communities, deliver essential items with lifesaving speed, integrate all modes of transportation and achieve Canada’s net zero targets. She has dedicated her aviation law practice to working with industry and government to realize this potential in a cost-effective, commercially viable way.
Kate is one of the only lawyers in Canada to merge municipal and aviation law into a single practice. For more than 15 years she has focused on municipal risk, crisis management, mediation, public advocacy and building community acceptance of changes in both aviation and municipal law.
Kate is equally at home in a courtroom or boardroom. She regularly engages in written advocacy for complex, highly technical and multi-jurisdictional disputes, including nuanced settlement discussions. She also thrives on collaborating with in-house counsel and subject matter experts to help organizations and communities with regulatory advice, legal project management and strategic input for their air corridor development and infrastructure projects. She is a go-to on disruptive and autonomous technologies, including AAM, UAM, eVTOL, and unmanned aircraft systems and drones.
Mid-sized organizations consider Kate a fractional general counsel, essential to their team’s day-to-day legal decision-making in everything from regulatory compliance to labour and employment issues. All organizations value her 10,000-foot view on highly sensitive initiatives and her enthusiasm for innovation, including how her legal services are delivered and billed. A commercially licensed glider and fixed-wing pilot with some rotary and dispatch experience, she understands the industry from the inside.
She doesn’t do it alone. Kate is the leader of BLG’s national aviation law group — close to 70 lawyers with expertise and connections in every area of aviation, from satellites to real estate. Just like our clients, the aviation law team works without borders, serving every province and territory with a breadth and depth of services that helps clients achieve their goals and helps Canada’s aviation industry evolve.
Katherine provides legal services through a Law Corporation.