Spheres
About →

Newsletter →

Tag: PD

  • Toronto’s smaller airport gets a pre-clearance facility

    Speaking of possible oneworld members, good news for travelers in Toronto, where Porter operates a hub. Ethan Lang, reporting for CBC:

    Starting Tuesday, travellers flying to the U.S. from downtown Toronto will be able to go through customs before departing Billy Bishop airport.

    That’s due to the opening of a new pre-clearance facility at the island airport, which politicians and officials announced at a news conference Monday. Canada’s Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon told reporters the addition would make travel “faster, more convenient and more reliable.”

    …The new facility is opening as Porter Airlines and Air Canada expand the number of U.S. routes from Billy Bishop, said Roelof-Jan Steenstra, CEO of Toronto Port Authority, the airport’s owner. The authority has been trying to add pre-clearance at the airport for over a decade, he said.

    Billy Bishop is the smaller, regional airport for Toronto (if you’re flying internationally, you’ll be more familiar with Pearson). The pre-clearance facility mostly benefits Porter, which operates flights to Boston, Chicago, Nashville, New York, and DC from here.

  • Porter is considering joining oneworld

    Gary Leff, writing for View from the Wing:

    Asked by The Airline Observer‘s Brian Sumers at the Skift Aviation Forum whether oneworld alliance membership is in the cards for them, Porter’s President Kevin Jackson said that the “honest answer” is “We don’t know.”

    “We are forming relationships with a lot of oneworld carriers now. Alaska and American are two of them.”

    He mentions Qatar Airways as one of their partners, and they already partner with British Airways too. Jackson notes that “oneworld doesn’t have a partner in Canada and Porter would make an obvious answer to that if we choose to join.” 

    “Obvious” meaning “only” – Air Canada is in Star Alliance and WestJet is part-owned by a group of SkyTeam airlines.

    Porter doesn’t have a business class and hasn’t opened any lounges, but the flights get good reviews for the little things like food and wifi. A sort of Canadian version of Alaska (with whom Porter has a deep partnership).