Canada’s Porter Airlines postpones restart to mid-1Q21

Canadian regional carrier Porter Airlines (PD, Toronto City Centre) has postponed its restart date again, this time to February 11, 2021, due to increasing COVID-19 cases and ongoing travel restrictions affecting customer demand. The Toronto-based airline has postponed the resumption of its commercial operations five times since it suspended operations on March 21 due to COVID-19 restrictions. The airline last aimed to lift off again on December 15. “Deferring service until 2021 is not a decision we anticipated having to make as COVID-19 emerged early this year,” president and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Deluce, said in a statement. “Every delay to restarting flights has the greatest effect on our team members, who are eager to do their part to help serve customers under safe conditions. Unfortunately, the continued and cumulative effects of restrictive travel advisories, border closures, and quarantines have suffocated travel demand to the point that a return to sustainable levels of passenger traffic is highly unlikely in 2020.” “Planning a restart after the traditionally slow post-holiday January period provides a reasonable opportunity to begin flying if conditions improve. This also gives more time for the development of rapid testing solutions as a promising means to lift government-imposed restrictions on travel,” he said. The carrier normally operates 29 owned DHC-8-Q400s on routes across Canada and the US, as well as to destinations in the Caribbean in partnership with US low-cost carrier, JetBlue Airways (B6, New York JFK).