In this post:
Introduction
Porter Airlines markets itself as a boutique airline. Founded in 2006 by the Deluce family (this will become particularly relevant later), a family with decades of experience running airlines. Until the start of last February, Porter’s operations were focused on Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport. This airport has restrictions on the type of aircraft that can operate due to the close proximity to the centre of Toronto. Only turboprop aircraft are allowed to land there, with jet operations banned. As such, until last year, Porter’s entire fleet consisted of Dash 8 Q400s to comply with the operating restrictions into Billy Bishop.
Porter had hoped to change this when they placed an order for Bombardier C-Series aircraft conditional on their operations being allowed at Billy Bishop. This ended up not happening, so the order for the now A220s was scrapped, and instead, an order was placed for Embraer E195-E2s. These still couldn’t be operated from Billy Bishop, however, so the airline expanded outwards to Toronto Pearson. During the pandemic, the airline actually shut down from March 2020 until September 2021.
The airline is not giving up on its boutique roots, though, and is maintaining turboprop operations at the Billy Bishop as well as signing a contract to develop a new nine-gate terminal at a secondary Montreal Airport. These two airports allow the airline to control the experience far more than at the primary airports like Pearson and Trudeau.
Booking
In line with the arrival of the Embraers, Porter has revamped their ticketing classes as well as their loyalty programme. There are six different classes of tickets now. Four of these classes fall under PorterClassic and two under PorterReserve. All of their planes solely have economy seats, though there are a variety of seat pitches available in different parts of the aircraft. The differences between Basic, Standard, Flexible and Freedom are predominantly hinged around the costs to change flights and seat assignment fees.
Basic only allows for a single personal item rather than two bags, which all other ticket classes allow. Freedom is the only PorterClassic fare to allow for a full refund (though Standard and Flexible allow for airline credit to be issued), and it is the only one to have checked baggage included. For lower levels, Porter then offers discounted bundles of add-ons for purchase.
For PorterReserve, there are two options, Navigate and Ultimate; the main difference is that Ultimate allows for a full refund (and increased loyalty points), whilst Navigate only gets you a credit. It should be noted that the booking engine does not show that you would be eligible for a credit if you cancel, but the Fare Options information page does confirm this. PorterReserve is viewed as all-inclusive economy, tickets also have dedicated check in, included baggage, preboarding and seat selection. The carrier has redesigned its loyalty scheme, VIPorter. The scheme is revenue-based, with base-level participants earning 5 points per dollar spent, rising to 7 points for the top two levels.
There are now five status levels with First, the top tier, requiring $10,000+, potentially a considerable amount for a regional carrier. Redemptions start at 5,000 points and have no capacity limits but will become more costly in line with how busy the service is and its cash prices. Points expire after 24 months of inactivity. Porter has introduced upgrade certificates, which will be issued at $3,000 of annual spending and every $2,000 after that, which books a confirmed PorterReserve ticket.
You can visit their website about the loyalty programme: flyporter.com
Ground Experience/Departure
Unlike most other airlines, Porter doesn’t have an app, so check-in needs to be either online or at a check-in desk. With first flights, I like to go to the desks anyway to get a printed boarding card for souvenir purposes.
Porter’s desks are a little tucked away around the corner with minimal signage from the airport, though there was a giant billboard advert nearby for the airline conveniently near their desks, though these appear throughout the airport, so they shouldn’t be used for navigating.
The airline had gone on a PR blitz to announce their arrival at Pearson, though at the time, ground staff at the airport were not so conscious of that, and there were reports of people being directed to Billy Bishop! My ticket was in Porter’s new class, PorterReserve, which comes with a dedicated check-in lane. Relatively unusually, I had to weigh both my hand luggage bags and then swap my laptop from my pull-along into my rucksack to comply with the weight restrictions, in this case, a max of 9kg a bag, which my laptop just pushed over. The staff were still getting used to the new airport and had trouble switching the weighing scales from pounds to kilograms.
Afterwards, I asked whether the new class got fast-track security, but sadly not so off to the normal queue, which luckily was not too long at 05:30 in the morning. It was longer, though, than I would have expected at that time in the morning, still looping around several sections of the queue snake.
Once through security, I made my way to the gate passing a podium with Porter’s logo with several executives standing around but no passengers, so either I missed the speech or all the passengers had just headed to the gate. Both the Ottawa and the Montreal bound Embraers were lined up next to each other, which I was able to spot from my hotel, giving Porter a claim on the seating area.
Porter had set up a tea and coffee stand with cookies for passengers to have, as well as a little cart with a locked box and dangling keys. This game involved passengers lining up and picking a key to try and unlock the box. Inside was a voucher for a free return ticket for the lucky passenger in PorterReserve anywhere on Porter’s network. Unfortunately for me, the box was unlocked by a passenger a few ahead of me in the queue, drat. The staff took the winner aside for photos and suggested the passengers hold on to the vouchers until later in the year when Porter would start flying to sun destinations such as the Caribbean and Mexico.
As we began boarding, the game was set up again for the passengers on the Montreal flight. All was not lost, however, as each passenger onboard the maiden flight was given an envelope that included a keyring with the flight details on it and a $150 discount voucher for future flights with Porter! Boarding was slightly chaotic as the queue system was largely overrun by avgeeks taking photos, and there was some disagreement amongst the staff over whether hand baggage needed to be size checked and tagged with an approved label. The check-in desk had approved the bag but not labelled it, as a manager had said tags were no longer required. I was worried I would need to go through the process again, but this did not happen. Boarding commenced with PorterReserve invited first and then other passengers.
Cabin/Seat
The cabin consists of 33 rows, each with four seats. The entire cabin is 2-2 with all economy seating. Within the cabin, there are three different types of seats. PorterReserve seats are allocated in the first four rows; these seats are blue with grey headrests and have 36 inches of pitch; the three rows behind PorterReserve and the two exit rows have 34 inches of seat pitch.
These seats can be assigned free of charge on PorterClassic Freedom tickets but can be assigned for a fee to other PorterClassic ticketholders. The rest of the cabin has 30 inches of seat pitch. Behind PorterReserve, all the seats are grey. There is no curtain or bulkhead between PorterReserve and PorterClassic, just the colour change in the seats.
In the seatback pocket, refreshingly, there was a magazine, cleverly called Re: Porter and a card indicating the seat was PorterReserve as well as the obligatory safety card. The bulkhead was dark blue with the airline’s name in other shades of blue superimposed, bringing a splash of colour to the cabin. The seat next to mine remained open which I was confused about as the seatmap had showed it occupied when I booked, I had managed to snag the last window seat. Just before the doors closed, a man swept on with no luggage to take up the seat next to me.
He started a conversation with me, asking about my GoPro on the window, and I asked him in return if he was senior at Porter, given he chatted freely with the crew and popped into the flight deck, and he chuckled and said, “Yes”. We chatted for the entire flight, and it was only at the end, when he gave me his business card, did I realise I was sitting next to Robert Deluce, co-founder, Chairman and former CEO of the airline!
The seat features a fold-out table from the armrest, and other rows have a tray table that looks half-sized and folds down from the seatback but then folds out again to form a full-sized table.
Each seat has an overhead air vent, though the two are not paired together, one on the underside of the overhead bins and one angled on the edge of the aisle seat. In the same panel, there is a call button and a light. There are two power sockets between the seats available to use plugs in, but not USBs.
Snack
Porter provides free snacks and drinks (including beer and wine) to their passengers. On this flight, that translated to a drinks cart and a snack basket. The snack basket included chocolate chip banana cake, which I picked, as well as almonds, farro beans and cookies. As it was still really early in the day, and I was driving after arrival, I turned down the beer and just had an orange juice.
On longer flights, PorterReserve passengers will receive a choice of meal boxes with a selection of main courses and some accompaniments. Cocktails will also be available on those flights. For a flight this short, though, there does not actually seem to be a difference in the catering provided between PorterReserve and PorterClassic. Critically, though, you are guaranteed to at least be offered drinks and snacks up the front. On this flight, because it was so short, the two crew members only made it about halfway down the aircraft before they had to prepare the cabin for landing.
Inflight Entertainment/Wifi
On a flight as short as this one was, there really wasn’t any need for IFE or WiFi, but Porter has them both on their Embraers, and they are free to use. To use the WiFi, you either need to be a member of the VIPorter loyalty programme or watch an advert every 30 minutes. In exchange for free WiFi, I would say that is an absolute bargain, given you need to watch at least two adverts before most airline movies in their IFE systems!
The WiFi itself was fast and didn’t seem to struggle under load, given it was available to everyone. On this WiFi, there was a large selection of movies and TV shows available to stream for free. Helpfully Also, there was no need to download a separate app in order to watch this IFE, as you find on some US carriers where you need to download something pre-departure, or you can’t actually use the IFE during the flight…
Arrival/Entry Experience
All too soon, our descent began; we passed through the cloud layer into the frozen tundra below. Toronto had been chilly enough, with temperatures just below zero degrees Celsius, landing into Ottawa, with the thermometer landing at -29 Celsius, I was positively frozen.
The aircraft made its way to the terminal, where we passed a Porter Dash 8 and arrived on stand. There was no water cannon salute at either end this time, as the aircraft already needed to de-ice, so there was no need to exacerbate the problem.
At the gate were similar celebrations that we had left behind in Toronto, and a group of the passengers, myself included, stayed behind to take photos of the plane’s departure back to Toronto. Once again, Mr. Deluce was the final passenger back on the plane! This was made simpler because Much like the US and some UK regional airports, you arrive in the departures lounge and are not immediately shepherded out of the airport.
When I had booked the flight, it was touch and go whether the Ottawa flight or the Montreal flight would actually be first to depart as both were scheduled within half an hour of each other. I needn’t have worried in the end, as it was Montreal that took a delay, and we managed to land before they had even taken off.
Bottom Line
I was very impressed with Porter and its E195-E2s. The airline is on a major expansion roll at the moment, with 50 Embraers due to arrive and plans to cover more of Canada. It was a very pleasant flight, made even more so by the conversation I had with my seatmate. What I will say is that on a flight this short, PorterReserve does not provide nearly as much value as you would get on one of Porter’s “long haul” flights, though I did appreciate the extra legroom.
Porter will need to be careful as it expands that it doesn’t lose the boutique touch that the airline has become known for. Billy Bishop provides a barrier to competition, given its size and restrictions on jet operations, which has allowed Porter to thrive. Bringing the fight to larger airports and routes served by other airlines will amp up the challenge. If the conversation I had with Porter’s Chairman is anything to go by, though, they are anticipating this and are ready to rise to the occasion.
Like our contributor’s “Porter E195-E2 Maiden Flight”? You can also read more flight reviews here.
