Porter Airlines ‘assessing’ after expansion plan nixed

Porter Airlines would not elaborate on the airline’s future strategy at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport now that its expansion plan is dead.

“We will continue assessing the situation,” spokesman Brad Cicero said in an email.

Last week, PortsToronto said it would not complete the final reports for the three studies requested by Toronto City Council in 2014 after the federal government recently said it would not amend the tripartite agreement it has with PortsToronto and the City of Toronto that prohibits commercial jets at Billy Bishop airport.

PortsToronto, which owns Billy Bishop airport, said instead it would complete the technical work associated with the studies that is currently underway and hand over the information to the City of Toronto and others involved in the process.

McGill University professor and aviation expert Karl Moore said the news was a blow to Porter’s future strategy.

The company could fly jets out of Toronto’s Pearson airport or Montreal’s Trudeau airport, he said, but that would get rid of their biggest asset.

“That downtown airport is convenient,” he said. “It’s really appealing for people who are flying into Toronto that mostly have business downtown.”

Flying out of the much busier Pearson airport, he said, would rob the company of some of the service that differentiates it from its competition. The island airport, at which Porter is a tenant, is a much more streamlined experience.

“When you go to Pearson, you lose something in the translation,” he said.

The proposed expansion of Billy Bishop was criticized by downtown residents and some local politicians, who said an expanded airport would harm Toronto’s waterfront, bringing more noise and more traffic to the area at the bottom of Bathurst Street.

Liberal MP Adam Vaughan, who opposed the project when he was a city councillor, told the Toronto Star that the focus for Toronto is on building a great waterfront for everyone, not just airplanes.

Moore said the concerns about noise were irrelevant, because the Bombardier C-Series jets that Porter had proposed to use are quieter than the turbo-prop Bombardier Q400s that make up its current fleet.

Concerns about an increase in traffic are far more legitimate, he said, but many passengers would trade a busier airport for the convenience of long-haul flights from downtown.

The expansion project dates back to April 2013, when Porter first floated the idea of building out the airport to make it suitable for jet-powered airplanes.

Moore said adding jets to Porter’s fleet would allow it to service farther-flung destination, such as Miami and Los Angeles, which are beyond the range of its Q400s.

The company sought to renegotiate the agreement governing the airport, which includes the City of Toronto, PortsToronto and the federal government.

In late November, new federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau said the tripartite agreement, which prohibits commercial jets at Billy Bishop airport, would not be reopened. The current deal is scheduled to last until 2033.

Moore said Porter’s underlying business is still sound, but that the company now has to rethink its future plans.

Yet, he said, there is still the possibility that the federal government comes around to the idea.

“The Liberals could rethink it, and I hope they do,” he said.

Tim Ehlich of NoJetsTO, which opposed the airline expansion and organized protests against Porter’s plan, said PortsToronto made the right decision by suspending the studies.

“We need a port authority that’s a partner for the revitalization of Toronto’s waterfront, not a detractor,” he said.

As for Porter’s future plans, NoJetsTO’s Ehlich said the route forward for the airline is clear.

“We expect Porter Airlines to respect and uphold the federal government’s decision to protect our waterfront from jets,” he said. “Porter is more than welcome to fly the CS100 jet from Pearson — Toronto’s existing jet airport.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Porter Airlines was still working to complete the technical work on the three studies looking at its expansion plan.