Porter Airlines plans to add direct flights from Ottawa to Florida’s Gulf Coast, California, the Caribbean and other destinations over the next two years as it looks to cement the capital’s status as a major hub for the carrier, Porter CEO Michael Deluce said Thursday.
“We want to be the hometown airline in Ottawa,” Deluce told Mayor Mark Sutcliffe during a question-and-answer session at City Hall as part of the Mayor’s Breakfast series. “We will continue to put faith in Ottawa as a market. It is our most important growth city across our entire network.”
Deluce said Porter is targeting cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas as well as the west coast of Florida and the Caribbean for its next direct routes from YOW.
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In a followup interview after the event, Deluce would not divulge any timelines for such moves, saying only that the airline will continue to announce new destinations from Ottawa on a “regular basis.”
“You’re going to see a continued strong pace of new markets over the next six months, 12 months, 24 months,” Deluce told OBJ. “We’re excited.”
Porter has served Ottawa International Airport, known by the call letters YOW, since the airline was launched in 2006.
But the Toronto-based company has stepped up its service to the capital significantly over the past 12 months, introducing new non-stop flights to Halifax, Moncton, Fredericton, Charlottetown, St. John’s, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, with Winnipeg soon to join that list.
Deluce said the airline is poised to hit a major milestone later this year, when it expects to become YOW’s No. 1 carrier in terms of daily flights and passenger traffic.
By the end of the summer, Deluce said, almost half of the travellers passing through Ottawa’s airport will be flying with Porter.
The carrier “has made a hub out of Ottawa,” he told Sutcliffe, adding the nation’s capital “has long been the most underserved major city in Canada on a seats-per capita basis.”
More flight options
The aviation industry veteran noted that airports that become major hubs benefit from an influx of passengers who use the terminal as a connecting point to other destinations.
As an example, he cited Calgary International Airport, which serves a metropolitan area with roughly the same population as Ottawa, yet saw nearly four times as many passengers pass through its gates in 2019 – 18 million compared with five million at YOW.
“Cities that are hubs, where there is a lot of connecting traffic, are where you have the best service,” Deluce added.
“What you start creating are flows of passengers … through Ottawa. Local traffic benefits. Ottawa residents, people coming to visit Ottawa, have more flight options. You get stronger local traffic and you get a much higher share of that local traffic, which is what we’re seeing.”
Sutcliffe said Porter’s push to add more flights to and from YOW will help alleviate a major pain point for Ottawa business travellers, who have long lamented the lack of direct flights to key destinations such as Silicon Valley.
“I think many residents of Ottawa and many business owners have felt for a long time that Ottawa has been overlooked by the airline industry,” he told OBJ in an interview after the event. “The fact that Porter views Ottawa as a hub I think is a huge milestone for the city. It’s going to bring more people and more traffic to our city.”
Mark Laroche, president and CEO of the Ottawa International Airport Authority, agreed.
Expanded facilities
“There is only going to be one airline that is going to be hubbing through Ottawa, and it’s going to be Porter for the next decade,” he said.
“The more support they see in the community, they are going to offer more destinations, more direct flights. Ottawa is a small market for the airline industry, and we need connecting traffic to fill the aircraft so (airlines) can make a return on (their investment) on new routes.”
Porter – which has been on an expansion tear since the airline industry began emerging from the pandemic – has made no secret of its desire to become the leading carrier in the National Capital Region.
The company is investing $65 million in two new aircraft hangars at Ottawa Airport that will serve as the primary maintenance base for its growing fleet of Embraer E195-E2 aircraft, as well as a maintenance hub for its De Havilland Dash 8-400 aircraft. The first phase of the project opened late last year, with the second phase slated for completion next month.
Meanwhile, the airline announced earlier this year it plans to establish a new crew base at YOW this summer for pilots and flight attendants who staff its Embraer E2 fleet.
In all, Porter expects to nearly double its number of Ottawa-based employees to 450 from the current total of 250 by the end of 2024.
Calling YOW his second-favourite air terminal after Porter’s original launching point at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Deluce said it is a “very easy connecting point” for passengers from both the east and west coasts.
“We are going to continue (adding routes) as long as the community is using the service,” he said. “There is tremendous opportunity for Ottawa.”
