Porter Airlines of Canada starts new service between Toronto and Chicago

Porter Airlines, a regional passenger carrier based at Toronto’s City Centre Airport in Canada, has launched a new service between Toronto City Centre Airport and Chicago’s Midway International Airport in the United States.

Initially, Porter Airlines will operate three daily roundtrip flights per weekday and two flights each on Saturday and Sunday.

From January 8, 2009, the airline will operate the full schedule of 6 daily weekday flights and added weekend service.

Porter Airlines is using a Bombardier Q400 aircraft, with 70-seats, to operate the new service.

It may be noted that Porter Airlines has launched the new international flight between Toronto and Chicago at a time when most airlines are trimming their flights in view of the global economic recession and over two dozen carriers went bankrupt and closed down.

Porter Airlines currently serves Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City and Halifax in Canada and New York (Newark) in the United States. It has seasonal flights to Mt Tremblant, Quebec, Canada. It also plans to fly to cities in the United States such as Boston, Washington, and Philadelphia as it buys more planes in the coming months.

In a statement, Robert DeLuce, chief executive officer of Porter Airlines, said: “This is another milestone in Porter’s development and we are pleased to bring our unique service to Chicago. This will change the travel experience between Toronto and Chicago, making it fast, convenient and simple. Last week was the election of Senator Obama to the presidency. We certainly didn’t plan any of that, but we recognise that there will be an increasing amount of passenger traffic and requirements.”

According to the statement, Chicago and Toronto have a ‘sister cities’ arrangement and so there is already a good amount of travel back and forth between the two cities. Porter Airlines, it added, is trying to cash in on a renewed interest in Chicago from north of the border where the airline has strived for the expansion of Toronto’s lake front airport.

Georges Rioux, Canada’s consul-general in Chicago, Illinois, the United States, was quoted by the website cbs2chicago.com as commenting on Porter Airlines’ new Toronto-Chicago flight: “Chicago is just the new tourist site. Over and above the connection with the President-elect, there will be further business connections with Chicago.”

Aviation analysts say that Porter Airlines’ Toronto-Chicago flight will benefit in a big way Chicago’s Midway International Airport, which was hit when ATA Airlines went bankrupt in June 2008. (ATA Airlines, formerly known as American Trans Air, was a low-cost scheduled service and charter airline based in Indianapolis, Indiana, the United States. ATA operated scheduled passenger flights throughout the US mainland and Hawaii, as well as military and commercial charter flights around the world.