Porter Airlines Returns To Saint John

Air traffic continues to pick up at the Saint John Airport with another airline returning to the airport Wednesday.

Porter Airlines will offer flights to Ottawa and onto the Billy Bishop Airport on Toronto Island six days a week.

“It’s just another sign that there is a recovery underway and some positivity in the marketplace,” Greg Hierlihy, the airport’s interim president and CEO, said Tuesday.

Porter becomes the fourth airline to serve YSJ since commercial flights resumed at the airport in late June.

The first to return was Air Canada, which currently offers twice-daily flights to Montreal and one flight per day to Toronto.

“Those flights are going well and are quite full actually,” said Hierlihy, who added they hope a second daily flight will be added to Toronto before the end of the year.

Ultra-low-cost carrier Flair Airlines began in early July and offers twice-weekly service to Toronto.

The airline, which selected YSJ as its exclusive New Brunswick destination, is expected to add a third weekly flight in March.

“That flight certainly has gone over very well,” said Hierlihy. “It sold out several times in August, strong numbers in September, and we’re hopeful that it’ll continue to show strongly.”

Regional carrier PAL Airlines also launched in July and offers a direct flight between Saint John and Halifax. Sunwing Airlines is scheduled to resume flight service in February with direct flights to Cuba, said Hierlihy.

Demand continues to increase

Hierlihy said they have noticed a lot of pent-up demand for air travel since flights returned to the Saint John Airport.

Passenger volumes in August were about 35 per cent of what they were in August 2019, a few months before COVID-19 began to take hold in the region.

“The announced capacity for the balance of the year is 50 per cent, which is ahead of where we would have projected it,” said Hierlihy.

But Hierlihy said it will likely be 2024 or later before passenger volumes return to where they were before the pandemic arrived. He said a big indicator of that will be business travel, which has not yet rebounded.

“I know in the local market, many of our bigger customers are not travelling very much. We’re hopeful that that will begin in 2022, of course, depending on how we handle this fourth wave and beyond,” he said.

“I think that will be the trigger to say when we might look at our forecast again.”

YSJ has signed on with a third-party company to provide pre-departure COVID-19 testing for those travelling to places requiring proof of a negative test.

Hierlihy said the tests, which will cost you around $200 to $300 each, will be available at the airport within the next couple of weeks.

“It’s a fee-for-service, but it’s something that we have seen some demand for,” he said.