Porter and USA

[Kip Powick]

Chris Sorensen

Business Reporter

Porter Airlines chief Robert Deluce says his carrier's fledgling New York service may not be "viable" in the face of anti-congestion measures proposed for the clogged Newark Liberty International Airport.

The airline's schedule between Toronto's island airport and the Big Apple may be disrupted by the United States Federal Aviation Administration's efforts to reduce traffic at Newark, which is known for lengthy delays during peak hours.

Porter complains in filings to the U.S. agency that the "most important weekday and Sunday departure and arrival have been eliminated."

Other flights bumped to later in the evening will have to be scrapped entirely because of the Toronto City Centre Airport's restrictions on late-night operations.

Deluce said in an interview yesterday that the proposed changes, scheduled to go into effect later this spring, would effectively force Porter to slash the number of round-trip flights between the two airports to five per day from seven. "We would have never started up service in New York if we had any indication that we would only have five flights," Deluce said.

The changes, he added, will hit Porter disproportionately.

"The schedule they're giving us under the draft order is not viable," he said.

The airline argues it should be exempt from the new rules because its Bombardier-built Q-400 turboprops can land on the airport's shorter and less-used runway.

However, Robert Kokonis, the president of airline consultancy AirTrav Inc., said he doubted Porter's argument would hold much sway with U.S. regulators.

"They will look around and say, `We've got a whole bunch of U.S. carriers that are suffering right now and we've got to spread around some of the pain,'" he said.

"I don't see where they would necessarily favour Porter over the domestic U.S. carriers."

The aviation agency has already limited traffic at other New York-area airports, including La Guardia and John F. Kennedy International, because airlines continued to add flights during peak hours despite air and ground space shortages.

[rudder]

Boo-hoo Bobby. Welcome to the bigs

[Super 80]

It is a frustrating situation for all concerned because the FAA is just slashing more or less blindly without considering the runway and airspace utilization of the impacted flights. The turboprop traffic from Newark is more or less on another planet.

This was a large reason why Continental ordered Q400's of their own - a belief that Turboprops opperating from 11/29 would be excluded from future restrictions.

[Homerun]

A turboprop on approach or departure requires the same amount of protected airspace as a jet. There's only so much available airspace around NYC and it's saturated. Whether or not an airplane uses a different piece of pavement in EWR is irrelevant, imo.

[blues deville]

Twenty years ago City Express utilized runway 11/29 and there was probably just as much traffic around the same airspace then as there is now. Thirty to forty aircraft lined up at a time, controllers saying "Call sign only"....busy place. These Q400s are capable of flying RNAV approaches and could certainly stay away from the busy jet traffic on the 04/22 parallels.

I for one hope Porter can work around this latest FAA issue. Good luck to them........they may be the only ones who can afford to fuel up their aircraft!!!