Keep in mind PD won't be doing a sardine config on the aircraft, so they'll have a bit more range in that regard. Also, they mention rights to convert some orders to the E190-E2. The shorter bird has more range, which would make Cali doable easily year-round.

This is a business mentality I don't understand per se.

"We gotta grow! At any cost! Even if that costs us our profit centre." As if running a solid but unexciting business was simply too boring for management.

Porter had a genius model using YTZ and the Q400. They had only nominal competition from Air Canada and has a premium base of customers who liked the convenience of YTZ. Sure, probably not a lot of growth because of the limitations, but it made money.

I guess they can bleed the profits from that to spend a pile of money on fancy news jets and fighting with the big boys, but they might just risk killing the golden goose.

So, these new Embraers that Porter is buying, are they able to fly out of Billy Bishop, or will they have to fly out of Pearson?

Billy Bishop will remain for their turboprop operations. The Embraers will be based out of Pearson in Toronto, due to restrictions on jet traffic at Billy Bishop.

The only way I see this working is if Porter makes a play for Ottawa. They can't run multiple hubs and focus cities all over Air Canada's backyard without consequences. But Ottawa is a bit of a hole with lots of flights from everywhere but no AC or WS hub. And some real unfilled markets. Like YOW-SFO. Would help too if they get some genuine ties to JetBlue and turn B6 hubs into Porter's focus cities for the US.

I've been told they will enter our market, the question not answered is the timing. with the new aircraft I expect some time next year or 2023.

That would be a bit of a pain for somebody like myself who might like to fly Porter out west. The flight from Moncton to Toronto lands at Billy Bishop, but presumably the flight to, say, Edmonton would fly out of Pearson.

Is Porter planning on running shuttles to Pearson from Billy Bishop for their passengers, or would I have to take a bus to Union Station and then then take the Union-Pearson Express to YYZ to make connections?

who knows. Porter is making the best of the Feds not allowing them to operate out of YTZ with jets.

I wouldn't be surprised if they are hoping to eventually push for jet operations again in the future.

Dual hubs are weird, and no, I also don't really understand it for the reasons you mention.

The only time a dual hub works is that one serves only origin-and-destination (O/D) passengers and the other acts as the connection hub (think LaGuardia airport versus JFK airport in New York). Porter's operations are too variable in size to really make that work. So, they'll split O/D and connection traffic, making each hub weaker.

There's a reason Air Canada only worries about giving Porter nominal competition at Billy Bishop to Montreal and focuses on Pearson. It doesn't want to split its O/D and connecting passengers up, because one needs both to make most airlines work. Montreal-downtown Toronto just has enough premium traffic that makes it work as a single route unto itself.

Porter is going to be the first to get flushed if they go ahead with this.

Despite speculation to the contrary Canada is not big enough for three airlines, let alone four. Porter only survived this long because of their tortuous relationship with YTZ.

Or (since all of this is purely hypothetical until 2022) maybe you'll be able to connect in Ottawa to points west since most of Porters Q400 routes to the Maritimes stop there and Ottawa was specifically mentioned as one of the proposed bases for the EJets.

This is where a YOW hub comes into play. Fly YQM-YOW on the Dash, connect at YOW to points west. YQM-Toronto local pax continue as thrus on the YQM-YOW-YTZ flights like they've always done. This avoids the need for any YTZ-YYZ airport transfers. For the Maritime cities, this will work fine, plus whatever else they add east of YOW, like maybe YQB.

Canada used to have a lot of regional players pre-consolidation into Canadi>n. Still have a few in niche markets that the majors avoid (e.g., Bearskin). No reason why Canada can't support 2 majors and 1 or 2 strong medium-sized North American carriers.

The USA is more than the US3 + WN. There's Frontier, Spirit, Allegiant, etc. + 2 new startups.

I hadn't thought of that, but you're right! Ottawa could serve as the hub for flights to the west from the NB cities (the situation might be different for Halifax since they are also slated to be a jet hub for Porter).

I recall once using Ottawa as a transfer point in the past, flying to Edmonton from Moncton on Air Canada.

Hopefully, this is Porter trying to be Canada's JetBlue and not Canada's Southwest.

Canada also had Jetsgo, Canada3000 and Greyhound Air. Not a stellar record.

Regionals like Nordair, Air BC and Air Ontario never had the kind of fleet Porter envisions.

I think there's a definite optimism that aviation will simply keep growing by the bounds it has been over the past 20 years, just as the Canadian economy has done quite well over that timespan.

I'm not so optimistic. As private sector growth has flagged in recent years, government and individual households have taken on a lot of debt to keep the music going.

Atlantic Canada also has an up and comer (PAL Airlines), which is filling a void (regional intercity air transport) largely abandoned by Air Canada.

This is very off-topic so I will make it really brief but is there really a 5th wave there? The numbers seem pretty low right now in most places. I think it will be fine to operate there (I could totally be wrong) :)

Those performance graphs are also notoriously conservative since they must guarantee it to operators in every sale lest they suffer penalty. It’s quite common for the aircraft to exceed those metrics in service, often significantly.

C Series does, E2 does ….