Canada’s Porter Airlines is considering membership in the oneworld alliance.
Asked by The Airline Observer‘s Brian Sumers at the Skift Aviation Forum whether oneworld alliance membership is in the cards for them, Porter’s President Kevin Jackson said that the “honest answer” is “We don’t know.”
We are forming relationships with a lot of oneworld carriers now. Alaska and American are two of them.
He mentions Qatar Airways as one of their partners, and they already partner with British Airways too. Jackson notes that “oneworld doesn’t have a partner in Canada and Porter would make an obvious answer to that if we choose to join.”
However, Porter hasn’t figured out yet whether alliance membership versus partnership makes sense for them. Alliance membership is more expensive.
Porter is based at Toronto’s Billy Bishop airport near downtown, and hubs there as well as Toronto-Pearson and Ottawa. They fly 48 Embraer E195-E2 jets and 29 De Havilland Dash 8-400 turboprops in all-economy configurations.
They offer service throughout the eastern U.S. plus key leisure and American Airlines hubs in Florida. Cities include places like Boston, New York JFK and Newark, Washington Dulles, and Philadelphia as well as Chicago Midway and O’Hare, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit and sun routes.
It would be great as air canada has high co pays and westjet (skyteam partner) is absolute garbagge
I just redeemed 10k alaska miles for a non stop from ft lauderdale to toronto
Great deal and nice airlines
It’s a really weird time to strike a US-Canadian deal, but thinking long term, the real question is if they really want a deal with AA on NY-Toronto and what that deal looks like. It was, of course, notably and understandably excluded from the codeshare deal announced earlier this year. And I’m not sure it really makes sense absent a Delta/Westjet-style JV deal where AA (and maybe Alaska) take a piece of Porter. Whether AA could actually pull that off… eh, low likelihood, but you never know.
I don’t think Porter Airlines flies to Cincinnati (CVG) currently and I can’t recall them ever having done so
They don’t fly to ORD, DTW or CLE
I think you are technically correct in referring to Porter as having all-economy configurations. However, the E95 has 7 rows in front with extra legroom, and the Q400 has 2 such rows. Both planes have 2-2 seating, so no middle seats. Furthermore, Porter offers free beer and wine, which many North American carriers do not offer in economy class. I would describe flying Porter as Economy Plus.
Data source: Aerolopa.com
Cool! I really like Porter, especially their racoon mascot, Mr. Porter, who’s always up to ‘cool things’ in their promotional emails. It’s honestly worth subscribing just to see that guy in my inbox.