Why Porter Should Carry On
On Oct. 5, Porter Airlines will increase its already busy service between Ottawa and Toronto, where it is spending $45 million expanding the terminal at Toronto City Centre Airport.
At the same time, Porter will increase flights from Ottawa to Halifax, start flying to St. John’s and open a dedicated passenger lounge in Ottawa International Airport. Next week it will begin service between Toronto and Boston.
This is part of an ambitious program moving Porter beyond Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Quebec City. Its routes now include Thunder Bay, Chicago and New York, and it is exploring more destinations.
All this from an upstart airline launched less than three years ago. It wouldn’t be quite right to say that Porter began life on a wing and a prayer, but running a profitable airline in Canada is a challenge. It takes patience, money and audacity.
And yet, if this expansion is a reliable measure, the model is working. The airline has been a success in a country that doesn’t have enough successes, especially when it comes to inter-city transit, where we are light-years behind Europe.
Porter began with a hunch: that it could offer a better service in a crowded market, that it could offer it at a competitive price, that it could do it with imagination and innovation — words seldom associated with commercial air travel in Canada.
So it decided first that it would serve Toronto from the downtown airport on Toronto Island, which had been used fitfully and unsuccessfully by Air Canada and other regional carriers.
Smart choice. The airport sits off the foot of Bathurst Street, just west of downtown. It is small and romantic, an aerodrome on a windswept airfield. The ferry takes only a minute, but the crossing enhances the sense of distance and evokes a more elegant era.
Porter recalls flying when flying was fun. The stewardesses — sorry, flight attendants — wear 1960s-inspired, handsome blue uniforms and pillbox hats (by a Canadian designer) as if they had walked off the set of Mad Men. They serve light meals and beer (they’ve recently introduced Steam Whistle) in glasses, gratis. Yes, gratis.
Porter’s aircraft of choice is the Bombardier Dash 8 Q-400 turboprop. It is quick, quiet and comfortable. Sitting in its roomy leather seats, you feel the intimacy of a private plane (even though it carries 70 passengers).
The best part, though, is the plane makes little noise and uses 30 to 40 per cent less fuel than others. That means Porter doesn’t have to fly full to make money, which is good, because some flights are as much as two-thirds empty.
Something else: Porter understands service. If weather makes a flight divert to Toronto Pearson International Airport, which can happen, their staff arrange taxis, at their expense, with politeness and precision. Unlike Air Canada, they tell you why they’re late (which they can be) and apologize for it.
No wonder Porter is growing. In Toronto it provides a free bus to and from the Royal York Hotel, near the subway and Union Station. If you’re going downtown, you save $50 in taxi fare and 25 minutes each way.
All told, this is a remarkable enterprise. A new idea. Something to cheer. Right?
Well, not everyone is happy. David Miller, the mayor of Toronto, opposes the airport and the airline. He is supported by CommunityAir, a coalition of the cantankerous that think Porter is nefarious and the island airport will “ruin the quality of life of all Torontonians.”
CommunityAir appears at every opportunity with its paper popgun, hoping to shoot down Porter. It sees only noise, congestion and pollution. Propose a bridge to the island, which the city had approved, and that’s bad, bad, bad. Propose a tunnel or a new, larger ferry, and that’s bad, too.
You know, though, the critics aren’t all wrong. The runway is small, airplanes make noise, and there are birds, winds and other legitimate issues of safety. Moreover, here is a leafy patch of parkland in Lake Ontario and here is an airport. Ideally, better to have no airport and more parkland.
The problem is that Greater Toronto is now some five million people and growing. Pearson Airport isn’t served by rail to downtown, like most major cities in Europe and the United States. Nor, more appallingly, is there high-speed rail to Ottawa and Montreal, where Porter flies virtually every hour of every day.
So here’s a proposal for CommunityAir: instead of railing against a sensible service, join those who propose long-overdue high-speed rail connecting Toronto and Ottawa in three hours.
Then — only then — let us revisit the future of the island airport and the role of Porter Airlines, something new and necessary in Canada.
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