Toronto Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport | ?m | ?s | Ports Toronto | Arup

The last Q200 was delivered in early 2009. I think they made a few Q300s during 2009 and that was it for them as well. Final delivered numbers were Q100: 299, Q200: 105, Q300 267 and Q400:344 (with a Q400 backlog of 62 as of Jan 31/2011)
 
I've seen that plane landing at Downsview as well. I imagine they must use it for testing new technologies for the Q400. So, chances are you'll see it again.

As an aside, I saw a Porter Dash 8 landing at Downsview the other day. So, unless it was an older plane being ferried into the Bombardier plant for maintenance, I imagine one of their remaining aircraft on order will be joining the fleet in the coming days.
 
I'd imagine so. Boeing and Airbus do the painting at the time of final assembly. Granted, Boeing and Airbus are much larger than the Bombardier operation at Downview but I'd be surprised if Bombardier didn't have a painting bay.
 
Most likely, its not like they can fly a plane into a paint shop to get painted.
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They could if the paint shop was at an airport, like Pearson or Dorval. Did Bombardier repaint the Sky Regional planes? Or does Air Canada have its own paint shop somewhere?
 
16 more slots are now available at the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. United has decided that they will not use the slots previously allocated to Continental.

I expect that they just didn't have enough Q400s to go around.

http://www.financialpost.com/news/United+pulls+Toronto+Island/4603682/story.html
The newly merged United Airlines has abandoned its plans to launch a new service from Toronto Island, putting into play the 16 landing slots its was granted there.

“We have decided to not to continue with this plan,” Rahsaan Johnson, a spokesman for the airline, told the Financial Post in an interview. “The long and short of it is, with fuel prices where they are, we just don’t think we’ll reach our financial performance expectations.”
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It will be interesting to see if anyone expresses interest in those freed up slots.

Bearskin might see some opportunity here. US Air has Dash-8-300s and has expressed interest in the past for PHL service. Frontier has some Q400s and could do flights to their Milwaukee hub. Not sure who else has planes suitable for the task. Alaska Airlines to ORD? Cape Air to Albany or elsewhere in upstate New York?

The Toronto Port Authority will consult with the firm it hired to run the slot auction, Airport Coordination Ltd. (ACL), to determine what to do with United landing slots, said Mark McQueen, the authority’s chairman. He said the priority is to grant the slots to a carrier that will add new destinations.
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This might be an indication that are not planning to hand the slots over to Air Canada for them to start up YTZ-YOW service.
 
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That's disappointed. I had been looking to routing my family SNN-EWR-YTZ rather than the schlep to Pearson (I live in East York). Of course, there's always codesharing :D
 
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Porter lands in Windsor

WINDSOR -- Windsor’s newest airline made its first touchdown in the city Saturday.

A jet from Porter Airlines arrived Saturday at Windsor Airport. The airline will begin running three flights a day to downtown Toronto later this month, but this weekend it put its 70-seat Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 liner through its paces, making a swift landing despite strong winds and cloudy skies.

“It’s huge,” said airport operations director Phil Roberts. “Porter represents sort of the third of three great services.” They include WestJet’s flights to western Canada and Air Canada’s flights to the rest of the world.

Roberts said Porter would fly a 6:15 a.m. business flight, a mid-morning flight and an afternoon flight to Toronto every day. The route to Toronto, he said, takes about 50 minutes.

“I think we’re probably looking at something competitive enough that you really have to wonder if it’s worth driving.”

http://www.windsorstar.com/travel/Porter+lands+Windsor/4628615/story.html
 
PL1 said:
I guess the reporter wasn't actually at the airport and didn't do the fact-checking to determine that Porter doesn't fly jets.
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A lot of people use jet as a synonym for airplane. Even people flying Porter do that feet away from the plane they'll be taking.
 
Montreal Gazette article:

Air Canada Dumps All That's Jazz
Rebrands regional fleet of 130 planes under 'express' logo

By SCOTT DEVEAU, Postmedia News April 28, 2011

Air Canada is set to rebrand its entire regional fleet under a new moniker, "Air Canada express," putting an end to its Jazz brand and opening the door to additional regional partnerships.

The move comes just days before Air Canada is set to launch its new service from Toronto Island on Sunday using a small fleet of Bombardier Q400s operated by Sky Regional Airlines Inc.

The rationale for creating the new brand is to harmonize the flying provided by both Sky Regional and Air Canada's traditional regional partners - mainly Chorus Aviation Inc. through its subsidiary Jazz Aviation LP - a source familiar with the plan said.

The source said the aim would be to eventually fold any new regional partners under the same "express" umbrella.

The rebranding is part of a broader move at the airline to give consumers a clear expectation of the different services they will be receiving, both in terms of crew and plane size.

It differentiates the main line from the regional service and the yet-to-be named lowcost carrier that Air Canada hopes to launch within the next year as a subsidiary company.

The Toronto Island service will be the first to feature the Air Canada express logo in its marketing and on its planes.

The more than 120 planes Chorus operates on behalf of Air Canada will also be fitted with the new logo once they come in for painting as part of their regular maintenance.

Smaller regional affiliates, like Air Georgian and EVAS Air, will get the new name and look, too.

The facelift will have more planes carrying the "express" logo, about 130 in all, than competitor WestJet Airlines Ltd. has in its entire fleet.

The rebranding will effectively put an end to the Jazz brand after a decade at Air Canada....


Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/Canada+dumps+that+Jazz/4687090/story.html#ixzz1LLoWV5ht
 
Whoops! Guess there's a learning curve to be had.

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/985427--air-canada-plane-gets-stuck-in-island-airport-mud?bn=1


Air Canada plane gets stuck in island airport mud

Published 1 hour 7 minutes ago

Wendy Gillis Staff Reporter

An Air Canada plane bound for Montreal got stuck at Billy Bishop airport last night when one of its wheels sank in muddy grass beside the runway as the pilot made a wide turn.

Air Canada spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick said “an unfortunate combination of circumstances†led to the Tuesday night incident, which, grounded the plane and its 16 passengers just three days after the airline resumed flights out of the island airport.

Fitzpatrick said the Bombardier Q400 was on its way to the runway when its right rear wheel rolled off the cement and onto the grass, where it promptly sank.

“If it hadn’t been raining so much I’m sure it would have just gone over the grass,†said Fitzpatrick. “No one would have known. It would have just rolled back onto the cement.â€

To get to the runway the plane was to use, the pilot had to make a sharp turn. “This pilot was experienced, but he kind of went a little wide I guess on making the turn,†Fitzpatrick said.

No one was hurt and passengers were put on the next flight. However, the plane remained stuck into the night before it could be pulled back onto the paved surface. It was back in service Wednesday.

Air Canada resumed service out of Billy Bishop airport on Sunday for the first time since February 2006.
 
jn_12 said:
A lot of people use jet as a synonym for airplane. Even people flying Porter do that feet away from the plane they'll be taking.
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News flash: Journalists who are often not technical experts in any field they cover are often guilty of perpetuating misleading info. But then I'd say average consumers aren't much more vigilant.

The jet/propellor/plane thing is a bit of semantic overload that dates back to marketing tactics back in the 50s and 60s that ushered in the "jet age" to sell "jet planes" over the old fleets of piston powered propeller planes. A mostly harmless conflation. That is until now where we are seeing a reversal back to turboprops in the regional airline space due to today's high fuel costs and associated business and environmental constraints. It is outright confusion and misinformation for a number of reasons:
1) The Q400 and its competitors are **turboprops**. These are gas turbine engines that drive propellers. The "gas turbine part" is the "jet like" part. The Bombardier Q400 which came into service ~2000 is newer than most "jets" currently service.

2) So-called "Jets" like the Boing 737/747 or Airbus A319/320 etc. etc. are strictly speaking high bypass ratio **turbofan** planes. What this means is they employ gas turbine engines (again the most jet-like part) that are used to drive a set of blades that blows air. Sound like a propeller? That's because it *is* a propeller, with some important differences. Most obvious distinction is it has a lot more blades and it is surrounded by "duct" which is the tube like structure you will notice at the airport that wraps around the fan making it look sleek and jet-like. (Approaching 100% of the thrust from a turbofan is attributed to the fan blowing air, not from the gas turbine exhaust, which is where the "high bypass ratio" part of the name comes from.) The ducted fan confers a number of technical advantages to the turbofan over the turboprop, but the short story is turbofans can fly higher and faster than turboprops. But turboprops are still more fuel efficient and nimbler for shorter haul flights involving smaller airports. So they each occupy their own market space.

3) Real jets, which are properly called turbojets, haven't been flown as commercial airliners in a long time. Those derive 100% of thrust from gas turbine fuel burn exhaust, kinda like a rocket but breathing atmospheric air. The last one was the Concorde--remember that?? Before that, you may heard of the Boeing 707 and the De Havilland Comet which haven't been in service for a few decades. I'd be surprised if my parents flew in one. Those were extremely loud and very fuel inefficient which is why they were replaced by turbofan fleets. Only place turbojet engines remain today are in military applications like fighter jets.

Anyway, that's all very nit picky and nerdy to most people that don't care much about planes. But for the average consumer trying to make a visceral judgement whether or not to fly this way or that way, I think it has very important implications. But now more than ever before, with the price of energy and the environmental considerations it's even important to be clear. So yeah, that journalist and many like him/her are doing a disservice by perpetuating the misinformation.
 
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