Toronto Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport | ?m | ?s | Ports Toronto | Arup

where have you been traveling and what have been the reasons for the delays/cancellations? I might be able to give you some insight into why the flights get delayed/canceled depending on the destination.
One thing I can say for certain, Porter has never canceled a flight because of not enough passengers. Passengers used to try to blame us for doing that but it never once happened.
 
The timing on their IPO is quite interesting as the Supreme Court last week released a judgement that is likely to greatly increase the taxes the Toronto Port Authority must pay the City and I am sure they will then try to increase Porter's rent. The case was actually brought by the City of Montreal but City of Toronto made representations too. See: http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2010/2010scc14/2010scc14.html
CommunityAir published a commentary on this at: http://blog.communityair.org/
 
^ It'll increase payments in-lieu a bit, but it's not going to come anywhere close to charging the full tax rate for the airport, so I don't think they have too much to worry about. More than likely, what we'll see in place of a rent increase is an AIF increase maybe. Another thing to keep in mind is that ruling applies to all federal and provincial properties. The city can't pick and choose which ones it wants to tax more. That creates for some very interesting scenarios. Sure the current administration doesn't like the Island Airport. But I bet they love the CBC. And the ruling also makes life interesting for Pearson tenants as well. What if Mississauga decides they want more revenue from the airport? So we might well end up in situation where costs go up for everybody. In that case, Porter's relative competitive edge would not be decreased.

When it comes to the IPO though, they'll have to disclose all their liabilities, so we'll know how much this ruling hurts them (either through rent increases or decreased caused by higher fees).
 
jn_12 said:
re: profitability. For the longest time Deluce wouldn't use the word "profitable" when discussing the company's financial situation. It was always something along the lines of "revenue positive". You could say there's not a big difference, but he seemed to go out of his way to avoid saying "profitable" in favour of this other term. Maybe there was nothing to it, but I guess we'll see soon enough.
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I am willing to bet they weren't profitable for the first year or two, with all their costs taken into account. They probably were "revenue positive", as in making more money than spending on operations. But they probably didn't make enough to cover capital expenses or interest on capital or expenses other than those directly related to operations. Now that much of their capital program has come to fruition and they are reaching steady state, I am sure they have gone beyond "revenue positive" to profitable.
 
ganjavih said:
I've had nothing but good things to say about Porter from the beginning, but I'm starting to get fed up with flight delays and cancellations. Anyone else share this opinion?
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Can you elaborate? I've never had a delayed flight or cancellation with Porter. But then again I am not a frequent flier, so the chance of me getting hit by that is a lot lower than you.
 
The TPA and the City already settled on what the PILTs are worth for the Port and Airport. If the City wants to change the formula, they will likely have to go to court (unless they somehow get the TPA to settle out of court). Does the city really want to have another multiyear fight with the TPA?
 
kEiThZ said:
Can you elaborate? I've never had a delayed flight or cancellation with Porter. But then again I am not a frequent flier, so the chance of me getting hit by that is a lot lower than you.
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Interesting that....I have only made 3 return trips with them and each leg of each trip had scheduling variences.....just your luck I guess.
 
Well, recently, I haven't had good luck with them, but maybe it's just been my luck. But to give an example, on April 16, on the Toronto-Montreal route, the first flight of the day and the last flight of the day were cancelled, and several flights within the day were delayed, up to an hour. The April 16 data is no longer on their site, but if you look at April 17, two flights were cancelled.
 
The first flight of the day being canceled is probably the result of the plane not being at the Island. This mean that the night before it had to be diverted to YYZ due to curfew, which results in two pilots having to head over to Pearson at around 6am to ferry the flight to YTZ. From 6am, the earliest they're able to get it back to Island is usually 6:45-7, and the plane would still need to be groomed and catered. If the flight goes out before 7:30, that's pretty good. In this case, my guess is that the plane wouldn't get back to the Island until a time closer to the departure of the next Montreal flight ( 8:00 ), so they opted to combine the flights. If this was the reason, the staff should have said something. It's basically the first thing you look at on the flight tracker (a program that shows you where every plane is throughout the day). If a plane is shown to be at Pearson, you make sure all passengers are aware of this asap. Fact is, sometimes staff are afraid to make delay/cancellation announcements. It can be the toughest part of the job but it's a huge necessity.

Now, as for the flight at the end of the night being canceled, what probably happened was delays throughout the day added up to the 2nd to last YUL flight leaving close to the same time as the last flight. If there was enough space, they would combine the flights and move everyone from the last flight up to the 2nd last. If they foresee a problem with the last flight of the night, they usually call to ask people to come a bit earlier so they can be sure to get to their destination. Similarly, if at any point in the day delays force two flights to depart from the same place to the same destination, usually they'll be combined if there is enough space. This automatically cancels one of them.

The other potential issue is that a plane went out of service for some reason somewhere. A maintenance issue taking 30-60mins would be enough to cancel a flight and merge it with another one. At least with maintenance issues passengers are usually understanding. No one wants to get on a plane that isn't working properly. Also, if a plane that is supposed to service a destination with busy loads that day, they'll often replace it with another plane that was meant to service another destination. So let's say if flights to New York were full that day and flights to YUL were light, they'd switch a plane that was supposed to go to New York but had a maintenance issue with a plane that was supposed to go to YUL. They just don't want to end up in a situation where too many passengers keep getting bumped causing more than 70 passengers to be on the last flight out, which is pretty much the worst thing ever haha.

Hope this helps a bit. it's a bit hard to know for sure if these were the reasons, but they account for like 90% of all delays/cancellations on a weather-free day.
 
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The Porter Prospectus is available to download at www.sedar.com

It is an interesting read as it lays out their financial data and load information.

Some highlights:

Load Factor First Quarter 2009: 41.3% (ASMs 101.3 million, RPMs 41.9 million)
Load Factor First Quarter 2010: 47.0% (ASMs 220.8 million, RPMs 103.8 million)
Load Factor 2009: 47.9%, Q4 2009: 50.2%

Revenues 2009 $151,203,000 Operating Expenses 2009 $155,687,000
Revenues 2008 $81,707,000 Operating Expenses 2008 $80,906,000
Total Assets Q4 2009: $471,307,000
Total Long-term liabilities Q4 2009: $306,274,000
Shareholder's Equity Q4 2009: $106,578,000

Net loss of $4.6 million or $0.57 per share in 2009, net loss of $3.3 million ($0.41 per share) in 2008

Q4 2009 RASM: $0.227, CASM $0.217, CASM (exclding fuel): $0.172, CASM (excluding depreciation):$0.200

Cost Breakdown:
Fuel: 18%
Salaries: 21%
Aircraft maintenance materials and supplies: 3%
Food, beverages and supplies: 4%
General and administration: 6%
Depreciation: 8%
Flight operations and navigation charges: 8%
Airport operations: 16%
Sales and marketing: 16%

14 fixed-rate term loans each secured by a Q400 and 1 that is secured by an engine.
 
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sjc said:
The Porter Prospectus is available to download at www.sedar.com

It is an interesting read as it lays out their financial data and load information.

Some highlights:

Load Factor First Quarter 2009: 41.3% (ASMs 101.3 million, RPMs 41.9 million)
Load Factor First Quarter 2010: 47.0% (ASMs 220.8 million, RPMs 103.8 million)
Load Factor 2009: 47.9%, Q4 2009: 50.2%

Revenues 2009 $151,203,000 Operating Expenses 2009 $155,687,000
Revenues 2008 $81,707,000 Operating Expenses 2008 $80,906,000
Total Assets Q4 2009: $471,307,000
Total Long-term liabilities Q4 2009: $306,274,000
Shareholder's Equity Q4 2009: $106,578,000

Net loss of $4.6 million or $0.57 per share in 2009, net loss of $3.3 million ($0.41 per share) in 2008

Q4 2009 RASM: $0.227, CASM $0.217, CASM (exclding fuel): $0.172, CASM (excluding depreciation):$0.200

Cost Breakdown:
Fuel: 18%
Salaries: 21%
Aircraft maintenance materials and supplies: 3%
Food, beverages and supplies: 4%
General and administration: 6%
Depreciation: 8%
Flight operations and navigation charges: 8%
Airport operations: 16%
Sales and marketing: 16%

14 fixed-rate term loans each secured by a Q400 and 1 that is secured by an engine.
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Those are steadily improving numbers. That's a good sign. But I wonder why they chose to do the IPO before they had a profitable year on the books. But the looks of it, they'll break even this year or the next. So why not wait?
 
Perhaps because they have (or about to have) all of the planes that they have ordered. While they have some work to do filling up seats on existing routes, if they want to continue adding new routes, they will need to get some orders in for new planes. If they order new planes right now, it will be 2-3 years before they start seeing any actually arrive (unless they work out a deal with someone else on the waiting list). If they delay getting more money, that would push new planes off even further.
 
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