kEiThZ
Superstar
This wasn't the plan though. I'm fairly certain it's the result of what's going on in the US and the lack of foreseen success in new American markets like Boston or Washington considering how Chicago has done. And the planes keep coming. It's really really frowned upon in the airline industry to have a plane sit on the ground. So Porter has to send them somewhere, and the only thing they can do is put them into the Montreal and Ottawa rotations. It might be a case of too many planes, too fast. Mind you, they had to make sure they were in line for the new aircraft, so I don't blame them but they optioned a lot of planes that they might not have routes for. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
They have options. They could have deferred delivery and paid the penalties for doing so. A lot of airlines are doing that these days. Or they could have leased out their Q400s. It is a popular aircraft and it would have been easy to find a customer for a dry lease.
I don't think its a terrible sign if they jumped the gun on their homefront plan because the US market was not panning out. These are planes that break even with a 40% load factor (Air Canada and Westjet need LFs of between 70-80% to break even). Even if the plane is less than half full, Porter is making money. It's a fairly sound business decision to take delivery and use them to bolster Porter's frequency to approach that of their competitors. One of the biggest complaints I hear from my friends who I have converted to Porter fans is about the lack of scheduled flights. With hourly flights, they will attract a lot of the government and military personnel who need to travel between Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa.