Porter snack box
This past week I finally had the opportunity to fly Porter, the airline I've been watching for a while now. Never have my expectations for an airline been so high.
And Porter delivered. Every element of the experience was satisfying. The planes are quiet. The seats are comfortable. The snacks are of high quality. Coffee is served in actual cups, the supply of which unfortunately ran out on my second flight—see paper cup substitute above. Beer and wine are complimentary. The flight attendants are friendly and nattily clothed. The in-flight magazine, on sturdy paper and looking for all the world like a Monocle special edition, is full of interesting tips and beautiful graphics. (The Chicago briefing includes a write-up of the great 'hood of Andersonville, along with a mention of Scout, my favorite Chicago home furnishings den.)
What else? Toronto City Centre airport is possibly the most conveniently located airport I've ever come across, lying as it does a few minutes from downtown by ferry. Departing from Toronto City Centre is—how shall I put this?—similarly awesome. Due to the airport's size and flight volume, it's possible to check in as late as thirty minutes before a domestic flight or sixty minutes before an international flight. And then there's the gorgeous lounge, with a bank of shiny computers, a snack and drink station, and newspapers for the taking. All of this is gratis.
Best of all for budget travelers, the airline operates a three-part fare structure. Tickets purchased in advance can be quite affordable. To illustrate, the cheapest advance roundtrip fare I've found between Newark and Toronto over the winter is C$243.43 (just under US$192 as of right now.)
On my way in I chatted with Brad Cicero, Porter's Communications and Public Affairs manager. He told me that the airline's main focus is on expanding routes between Toronto and various U.S. destinations. The in-flight magazine lists Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Timmins, and Windsor as proposed domestic destinations as well as Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington DC as proposed US destinations.
(Here's another, completely unexpected perk of flying Porter from Newark to Toronto in the morning. Flights leave from the international terminal, which is dead in the a.m. There was nobody ahead of me in line going through security.)
I have but one caveat, and it's not an insignificant one. There appear to be some maintenance issues which obviously need to be rectified. My flight from Newark into Toronto included many passengers from an earlier, canceled flight.
I'll put this matter aside for the moment, because I want more than anything to claim that I've seen the future of commercial aviation. Most likely, Porter will merely designate a sideline of the future of aviation, and, granted, I have no idea how well the airline is doing. But it strikes me as a truly fantastic business model. One fantasizes readily about a West Coast version of Porter, based in Seattle or Portland, with routes to Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Boise, Reno, San Francisco and San Jose. Or a Western/Central European Porter. Or a Mediterranean Porter. Or a Porter for Japan.
If good service and dashing aesthetics are enough to lure a bargain-hunting shoestringer like me into the Porter orbit, I can only imagine the prospective fan base for it and other airlines of its ilk.
