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Porter Air preps for flight
Aug. 27, 2006. 07:50 AM
JENNIFER WELLS
BUSINESS COLUMNIST
Flying may not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.
— Amelia Earhart
It's 6 p.m. at Lobby. You know, Lobby, the chic bar on Bloor St. W. that thrusts itself open to the street, with its daring and overstuffed white furniture, its salon demeanour. Calla lilies the colour of Devon cream arise in decoration. And, fittingly, art deco silver turboprop airplanes, little ones on stands, are poised as if readying for takeoff.
Stencilled on one brick wall are the words "Flying Refined," sleekly rendered in an elegant italicized script. Over there, at the entranceway, models presenting as flight attendants are attired in pillbox hats — so Sixties! — and trim, cap-sleeved dresses in a deep, smoky blue. Small scarves are knotted about their necks.
A true pilot, Pino Ruggiero, is kitted out in his brand new four-stripe captain's duds. His hair curls beneath the back of his cap. He could be, well, a model, moving through the crowd, getting the message out. "I think," he says, smile flashing, "we're going to have fun."
You might imagine that some trickery is afoot, that the group has been teleported back to the dawn of commercial airline travel, when airline travel was fun and, dare we say, effervescent. But no. We are witnessing the unveiling of the flight attendants' livery for the city's newest flight club, Porter Airlines Inc., which is why we now observe Bob Deluce, 56, the airline's founder and chief executive. He stands amid a brace of mannequins attired in Porter gear. Behind him rise majestic black-and-white blow-ups, of Jackie Onassis, of Coco Chanel, her aging, but oh-so-fashionable whippet frame swathed in pearls, descending from an aircraft long ago.
"Porter is thrilled to be launching our airline with 10 flights a day to Ottawa," says Deluce. (Applause here.) "It has taken years of hard work and planning to bring our vision to fruition, and we are only weeks away from realizing our dream with our inaugural flight."
Next week, Porter hopes to take delivery of its first branded airplane, No. 1 in a fleet of 10 aircraft, which Deluce plans to double to 20 aircraft, which will fly out of Toronto City Centre Airport. You read that rightly. The island airport.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The heat has blown off the city, and Deluce is leading a tour of the island airport. He's dapper in a light grey glen check suit and Porsche Carrera glasses. He smiles a lot. He's happy. Bob Deluce, to appropriate the words of Mr. Irving Berlin, sees nothing but blue skies from now on.
We're up the stairs and through the terminal. The Porter check-in desks will be here, a laptop centre there, the espresso and wine bar around the corner. A $15-million capital injection by the Toronto Port Authority has created passenger transfer facilities on the waterfront and here on the island side and has paid for a spanking new ferry, scheduled to commence her journey next week from her home in Wheatley on the sylvan shores of Lake Erie.
No more standing in a snowbank. Passengers will move from the terminus to inside the ferry and will be spat out 90 seconds later across the Western Gap. Bridge? Who needs a bridge? "We were never hung up on there being a bridge," says Deluce. He's not kidding.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hold up a minute. Is it possible that three years have passed since the last municipal election? Yes, it is. Recall how David Miller made the fight over the island airport a keystone of his election campaign. "My entire campaign was about stopping the airport expansion," he reminds via cellphone, on his way back to the city after a family respite. "The point about stopping the fixed link was about stopping expansion of the use of the airport."
This is where it gets tricky. Or not. Depending on whose side you're on. "The federal government, the provincial government, the city and the people of Toronto have chosen a path of waterfront revitalization," says Miller. "If we want waterfront revitalization to be a success we can't have an island airport that becomes a busy commercial airport. It's just not acceptable."
Soon after his investiture, the mayor was successful in getting the bridge struck down dead. Deluce sued. Time passed. In May, 2005, the federal government paid $35 million to the port authority, monies that would at least in part be extended to aggrieved parties, including Deluce, who dropped his legal action. Asked to specify what he received of the $35 million, Deluce responds, "I can't do that." He cites confidentiality. But he goes on to say that what was left open to him was an opportunity to "go forward" with his new airline, which he insists is not "expansion," as his business plan falls within the contours of the so-called Tripartite Agreement, struck among the port authority, the federal government and the city in 1983, and that he has a commercial carrier operating agreement that extends to the year 2033.
Irony noted: killing the bridge put money in Deluce's corporate pocket that aided the launching of the airline he has always dreamed of.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We are moving across what feels very much like Bob Deluce's turf. He knows the area as well as, perhaps better than, anyone. He has been coming here since the Fifties, accompanying his father, who ran White River Aircraft Services. "I remember looking back at the shoreline when the Royal York was the tallest building on the waterfront," he says. He took flying lessons here in the Sixties and obtained his private licence by the time he was 17 — a family tradition, as Deluce's six brothers did the same.
Regional air carriers were Deluce's passion, flights to the tundra. He was, at one time, a part owner of Air Ontario, which evolved into a partnership with Air Canada, which ultimately resulted in Deluce's minority stake being bought out. "That left them free to develop the regional carriers into one entity," he says, "which ultimately became Air Canada Jazz."
Through a seven-year stint as president of Canada 3000 airlines, Deluce lusted after the verdant commercial territory of the island airport, "second," he says, "to no other urban airport in the world."
In the scant months since the settlement of the bridge dispute, Deluce has created an airline from scratch. Staff has been hired — the operation is halfway toward its projected staffing model of 200. Planes have been ordered. The Bombardier Q400s will be configured for 70 passengers, which is quite large when you think about it. In fact, the plane, which goes for about $25 million (U.S.), has jet-like attributes — a smoother, quieter ride than your average turboprop. Some have complained that the craft is too big for the short takeoff and landing, or STOL, requirements of the airport. But a spokesperson for Transport Canada says the Q400 "can manoeuvre and land safely on a 4,000-foot runway." And the island airport has one of those.
"The business plan," says Porter chairman Don Carty, "could not have been successful with the old technology turboprops." Few would know the airline business as well as Carty, who steered American Airlines through some of its dreaded bankruptcy days. These days he's talking about the importance of putting service back into the flight experience — thanks for that — and taking care of customers (ditto) and the vision. "To be successful in the terms we're talking about," he says, "we need to serve all the business destinations that are within a two-hour flight from the airport. That's everything from Chicago to New York to Boston to Philly to Washington." You thought these guys had some two-bit operation in mind? Nosiree. Seventeen destinations are envisioned.
Meanwhile, the chocolate leather seating will soon be installed in the Porter lounge at the terminal. And the face of "Mr. Porter," the airline's raccoon icon, has started popping up on billboards about the city.
Mr. Porter is the creation of Winkreative of Zurich, the international design group headed by Tyler Brûlé. "We thought if Toronto does have a mascot, whether they like it or not, it is the raccoon," says Brûlé, on the phone from somewhere in darkest Manhattan. "It's wily, it is very clever. It can be seen as a nuisance, but we wanted to make sure it's a nuisance to the competition and not the passenger."
Winkreative developed the Porter colour palette — taupe, white, various shades of blue. The tail of the aircraft will simply be imprinted. Porter. Porter. Porter. The interior of the aircraft, says Brûlé, will "take more cues from a very nice German sedan than a traditional aircraft." Sleek. Leg room. Comfortable pitch. Sophisticated.
The cheeky Mr. Porter will appear on "collateral" items. His backside on tote bags, for example. A full-frontal image on meal boxes, with the "P" and the "R" from Porter impaled on his knife and fork. "He is quite naughty and he does get up to mischief," says Brûlé.
And the uniforms. Sprung from the creative mind of Kimberley Newport-Mimran and her design outfit, Pink Tartan, the styles are a nod to the golden era of air travel. "High-altitude chic," Deluce calls it.
"Hopefully, over time you will feel you're part of a club," says Brûlé. "A club in the sense that maybe you're a step ahead of other travellers and that you're slightly in the know."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The focus in the post-election period has been the governance past and present of the airport by the Toronto Port Authority. "Like," says the mayor, "how on earth a bridge in which the port authority had signed a contract the week before that last municipal election could cost $35 million to cancel when the company had barely ordered the steel."
It has fallen to the estimable Roger Tassé of the law firm Gowlings to shed some light on the port authority's operations, a task assigned to him by the federal government in May. "My terms of reference are really focussed on whether due diligence was complied with by the port authority and the decisions they made, particularly the fixed link and the ferry, and whether in fact they complied with the principles of good governance," says Tassé, whose vast résumé includes a turn as deputy solicitor general. He adds, "There may be some other things I want to address."
Last Wednesday, Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon announced that he had granted Tassé an extension. His report is now expected in mid-October.
Amid the busy-bee construction at the airport, Air Canada Jazz announced in July that it would resume island flights to and from Ottawa and Montreal, flights that were to commence tomorrow. Lisa Raitt, the port authority's chief executive officer, swiftly sent a letter to the airline saying she was surprised to hear such news. Air Canada Jazz, in turn, professed surprise at Raitt's surprise. Meantime, advertisements were taken out. Tickets were sold.
Those plans collapsed when Raitt refused to recognize the airline's commercial carrier operating agreement. "We maintain that it's still valid," says Manon Stuart, manager of corporate communications for Air Canada Jazz of the agreement signed in 1995. "The TPA thinks otherwise."
The animus between the two parties runs deep. In March, the airline filed a notice of application in federal court seeking judicial review of the port authority's actions. The port authority had handed a discriminatory competitive advantage to Deluce, said the application. "It's to ensure fair and equal access to the city centre airport, which is a public facility," says Stuart of the application, which was expanded and refiled earlier this month.
There are no visible signs of Air Canada Jazz on the island. The carrier used to lease space from City Centre Aviation Ltd., a company purchased by, yes, Bob Deluce at the time of his re-energized re-engagement with the airport in the spring of 2005. In February, Jazz was handed an eviction notice. They were out by month's end. "We needed to get into that space," says Deluce.
The mayor addresses this point. "It doesn't seem to be very appropriate public policy to allow Mr. Deluce to get control of the terminal and evict its only competitor," says Miller. "I think Torontonians understand that the Toronto Port Authority is a public agency that has become completely unaccountable to the public."
It was the eviction of Jazz that resulted in the cessation of commercial flights from the airport. The mayor argues that as there are no commercial flights today, any future flights constitute expansion. "We've requested that the [transport] minister not allow any expansion of the use of the airport until Mr. Tassé's review is complete."
For the record, councillor and mayoralty candidate Jane Pitfield says she attended a Porter presentation a few months ago. "They're starting up with just a destination of Ottawa," she says, which, of course, vastly underestimates the long-term plan. Her position? "Do I want the airline?" she asks back. "I would say at this point that as long as the conditions that are in place ... are respected, I do not have a problem with the airport."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lisa Raitt is in her jogging gear, sitting in her office above the Harbour 60 Steakhouse, about to take off on holiday. She paints an unflattering picture of Air Canada as a laggardly and uninterested corporate partner. "They let their infrastructure run down, they let their lease go month to month, they eliminated transportation links from the city," says Raitt. "We've operated at that airport for 16 years," responds Stuart. "And during that time our operation was dictated by demand. We've long recognized the potential to do more business from the island. The inconvenience of the ferry ride deterred customers ... The situation changed."
By the standards of conventional corporate governance, the port authority is a bizarre beast. Prior to Friday, when the transport minister announced five new board appointments, there was a lone board representative. How, in such a vacuum, could any organization meet the standard tests of accountability and transparency? This particular organization has been a chronic money loser: after a small profit on the outer harbour marina last year, the authority saw losses not only on the airport but also its port operations for a total loss of $3.4 million. That situation, asserts Raitt, will be rectified by having a "based carrier," that is, an airline that calls the island solely its home. That would be Porter.
Above Raitt's desk are framed editorial cartoons that mark the long, tumultuous drama of the bridge episode along with a framed, handprinted letter with this pithy message: "Close the Toronto Island Airport! It's a zit on the face of a beautiful city."
Certainly that has been the long-standing complaint of Community Air, the citizens' group that has been fighting both the island airport and the port authority. "The waterfront is perhaps the key to the transformation of the city," says Community Air chairman Bill Freeman. "Now we have Robert Deluce and the Toronto Port Authority expanding the airport right in the midst of all of this ... He's flying in the face of a whole new rebuilding of the city."
In April, the port authority and Lisa Raitt, along with a former board member and its current CFO, sued Community Air in Ontario superior court, alleging that Freeman and others defamed the group in a memo sent to Transport Minister Cannon that was also posted on the Community Air website. The memo ranged across a broad terrain, including the $35 million in conflict resolution paid by the feds. The plaintiffs seek damages of $850,000.
Community Air's statement of defence will be filed tomorrow. "If they [the port authority] think people are going to shut up because of this little thing they don't understand the dynamics of what's going on here," says Freeman. "[C]ommunity outrage here is getting to fever pitch." Then he adds, "If this thing goes ahead there will be continual political action."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bay St. money manager Ira Gluskin was sliding through Lobby on Thursday night, peering out through blue-tinted glasses, past the "flight attendants" and the wait staff serving French fries in Chinese takeout containers. "It's a very high-risk investment," says Gluskin of the airline business. Still, he's in. As a Porter investor that is. He recently flew out of the island airport to the Bigwin Inn at Lake of Bays and he liked the experience very much.
It's important to make mention of money at this juncture, given the airline industry's renowned reputation for destroying shareholder equity. "When anybody buys into a private company, why do they do it?" asks Gluskin. "Because they hope to grow it. See it pay dividends." He describes Deluce as "the most windup ..." before losing his train of thought. Then he says, "He's doing something for us."
The list of those who do not agree is long. Bob Deluce doesn't seem bothered. He's got an operating agreement he figures is pretty airtight. And he sure is creating buzz. And now he's standing at the Lobby bar seeming darned relaxed, like a passenger settling into an airline seat, readying for takeoff.
Aug. 27, 2006. 07:50 AM
JENNIFER WELLS
BUSINESS COLUMNIST
Flying may not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.
— Amelia Earhart
It's 6 p.m. at Lobby. You know, Lobby, the chic bar on Bloor St. W. that thrusts itself open to the street, with its daring and overstuffed white furniture, its salon demeanour. Calla lilies the colour of Devon cream arise in decoration. And, fittingly, art deco silver turboprop airplanes, little ones on stands, are poised as if readying for takeoff.
Stencilled on one brick wall are the words "Flying Refined," sleekly rendered in an elegant italicized script. Over there, at the entranceway, models presenting as flight attendants are attired in pillbox hats — so Sixties! — and trim, cap-sleeved dresses in a deep, smoky blue. Small scarves are knotted about their necks.
A true pilot, Pino Ruggiero, is kitted out in his brand new four-stripe captain's duds. His hair curls beneath the back of his cap. He could be, well, a model, moving through the crowd, getting the message out. "I think," he says, smile flashing, "we're going to have fun."
You might imagine that some trickery is afoot, that the group has been teleported back to the dawn of commercial airline travel, when airline travel was fun and, dare we say, effervescent. But no. We are witnessing the unveiling of the flight attendants' livery for the city's newest flight club, Porter Airlines Inc., which is why we now observe Bob Deluce, 56, the airline's founder and chief executive. He stands amid a brace of mannequins attired in Porter gear. Behind him rise majestic black-and-white blow-ups, of Jackie Onassis, of Coco Chanel, her aging, but oh-so-fashionable whippet frame swathed in pearls, descending from an aircraft long ago.
"Porter is thrilled to be launching our airline with 10 flights a day to Ottawa," says Deluce. (Applause here.) "It has taken years of hard work and planning to bring our vision to fruition, and we are only weeks away from realizing our dream with our inaugural flight."
Next week, Porter hopes to take delivery of its first branded airplane, No. 1 in a fleet of 10 aircraft, which Deluce plans to double to 20 aircraft, which will fly out of Toronto City Centre Airport. You read that rightly. The island airport.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The heat has blown off the city, and Deluce is leading a tour of the island airport. He's dapper in a light grey glen check suit and Porsche Carrera glasses. He smiles a lot. He's happy. Bob Deluce, to appropriate the words of Mr. Irving Berlin, sees nothing but blue skies from now on.
We're up the stairs and through the terminal. The Porter check-in desks will be here, a laptop centre there, the espresso and wine bar around the corner. A $15-million capital injection by the Toronto Port Authority has created passenger transfer facilities on the waterfront and here on the island side and has paid for a spanking new ferry, scheduled to commence her journey next week from her home in Wheatley on the sylvan shores of Lake Erie.
No more standing in a snowbank. Passengers will move from the terminus to inside the ferry and will be spat out 90 seconds later across the Western Gap. Bridge? Who needs a bridge? "We were never hung up on there being a bridge," says Deluce. He's not kidding.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hold up a minute. Is it possible that three years have passed since the last municipal election? Yes, it is. Recall how David Miller made the fight over the island airport a keystone of his election campaign. "My entire campaign was about stopping the airport expansion," he reminds via cellphone, on his way back to the city after a family respite. "The point about stopping the fixed link was about stopping expansion of the use of the airport."
This is where it gets tricky. Or not. Depending on whose side you're on. "The federal government, the provincial government, the city and the people of Toronto have chosen a path of waterfront revitalization," says Miller. "If we want waterfront revitalization to be a success we can't have an island airport that becomes a busy commercial airport. It's just not acceptable."
Soon after his investiture, the mayor was successful in getting the bridge struck down dead. Deluce sued. Time passed. In May, 2005, the federal government paid $35 million to the port authority, monies that would at least in part be extended to aggrieved parties, including Deluce, who dropped his legal action. Asked to specify what he received of the $35 million, Deluce responds, "I can't do that." He cites confidentiality. But he goes on to say that what was left open to him was an opportunity to "go forward" with his new airline, which he insists is not "expansion," as his business plan falls within the contours of the so-called Tripartite Agreement, struck among the port authority, the federal government and the city in 1983, and that he has a commercial carrier operating agreement that extends to the year 2033.
Irony noted: killing the bridge put money in Deluce's corporate pocket that aided the launching of the airline he has always dreamed of.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We are moving across what feels very much like Bob Deluce's turf. He knows the area as well as, perhaps better than, anyone. He has been coming here since the Fifties, accompanying his father, who ran White River Aircraft Services. "I remember looking back at the shoreline when the Royal York was the tallest building on the waterfront," he says. He took flying lessons here in the Sixties and obtained his private licence by the time he was 17 — a family tradition, as Deluce's six brothers did the same.
Regional air carriers were Deluce's passion, flights to the tundra. He was, at one time, a part owner of Air Ontario, which evolved into a partnership with Air Canada, which ultimately resulted in Deluce's minority stake being bought out. "That left them free to develop the regional carriers into one entity," he says, "which ultimately became Air Canada Jazz."
Through a seven-year stint as president of Canada 3000 airlines, Deluce lusted after the verdant commercial territory of the island airport, "second," he says, "to no other urban airport in the world."
In the scant months since the settlement of the bridge dispute, Deluce has created an airline from scratch. Staff has been hired — the operation is halfway toward its projected staffing model of 200. Planes have been ordered. The Bombardier Q400s will be configured for 70 passengers, which is quite large when you think about it. In fact, the plane, which goes for about $25 million (U.S.), has jet-like attributes — a smoother, quieter ride than your average turboprop. Some have complained that the craft is too big for the short takeoff and landing, or STOL, requirements of the airport. But a spokesperson for Transport Canada says the Q400 "can manoeuvre and land safely on a 4,000-foot runway." And the island airport has one of those.
"The business plan," says Porter chairman Don Carty, "could not have been successful with the old technology turboprops." Few would know the airline business as well as Carty, who steered American Airlines through some of its dreaded bankruptcy days. These days he's talking about the importance of putting service back into the flight experience — thanks for that — and taking care of customers (ditto) and the vision. "To be successful in the terms we're talking about," he says, "we need to serve all the business destinations that are within a two-hour flight from the airport. That's everything from Chicago to New York to Boston to Philly to Washington." You thought these guys had some two-bit operation in mind? Nosiree. Seventeen destinations are envisioned.
Meanwhile, the chocolate leather seating will soon be installed in the Porter lounge at the terminal. And the face of "Mr. Porter," the airline's raccoon icon, has started popping up on billboards about the city.
Mr. Porter is the creation of Winkreative of Zurich, the international design group headed by Tyler Brûlé. "We thought if Toronto does have a mascot, whether they like it or not, it is the raccoon," says Brûlé, on the phone from somewhere in darkest Manhattan. "It's wily, it is very clever. It can be seen as a nuisance, but we wanted to make sure it's a nuisance to the competition and not the passenger."
Winkreative developed the Porter colour palette — taupe, white, various shades of blue. The tail of the aircraft will simply be imprinted. Porter. Porter. Porter. The interior of the aircraft, says Brûlé, will "take more cues from a very nice German sedan than a traditional aircraft." Sleek. Leg room. Comfortable pitch. Sophisticated.
The cheeky Mr. Porter will appear on "collateral" items. His backside on tote bags, for example. A full-frontal image on meal boxes, with the "P" and the "R" from Porter impaled on his knife and fork. "He is quite naughty and he does get up to mischief," says Brûlé.
And the uniforms. Sprung from the creative mind of Kimberley Newport-Mimran and her design outfit, Pink Tartan, the styles are a nod to the golden era of air travel. "High-altitude chic," Deluce calls it.
"Hopefully, over time you will feel you're part of a club," says Brûlé. "A club in the sense that maybe you're a step ahead of other travellers and that you're slightly in the know."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The focus in the post-election period has been the governance past and present of the airport by the Toronto Port Authority. "Like," says the mayor, "how on earth a bridge in which the port authority had signed a contract the week before that last municipal election could cost $35 million to cancel when the company had barely ordered the steel."
It has fallen to the estimable Roger Tassé of the law firm Gowlings to shed some light on the port authority's operations, a task assigned to him by the federal government in May. "My terms of reference are really focussed on whether due diligence was complied with by the port authority and the decisions they made, particularly the fixed link and the ferry, and whether in fact they complied with the principles of good governance," says Tassé, whose vast résumé includes a turn as deputy solicitor general. He adds, "There may be some other things I want to address."
Last Wednesday, Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon announced that he had granted Tassé an extension. His report is now expected in mid-October.
Amid the busy-bee construction at the airport, Air Canada Jazz announced in July that it would resume island flights to and from Ottawa and Montreal, flights that were to commence tomorrow. Lisa Raitt, the port authority's chief executive officer, swiftly sent a letter to the airline saying she was surprised to hear such news. Air Canada Jazz, in turn, professed surprise at Raitt's surprise. Meantime, advertisements were taken out. Tickets were sold.
Those plans collapsed when Raitt refused to recognize the airline's commercial carrier operating agreement. "We maintain that it's still valid," says Manon Stuart, manager of corporate communications for Air Canada Jazz of the agreement signed in 1995. "The TPA thinks otherwise."
The animus between the two parties runs deep. In March, the airline filed a notice of application in federal court seeking judicial review of the port authority's actions. The port authority had handed a discriminatory competitive advantage to Deluce, said the application. "It's to ensure fair and equal access to the city centre airport, which is a public facility," says Stuart of the application, which was expanded and refiled earlier this month.
There are no visible signs of Air Canada Jazz on the island. The carrier used to lease space from City Centre Aviation Ltd., a company purchased by, yes, Bob Deluce at the time of his re-energized re-engagement with the airport in the spring of 2005. In February, Jazz was handed an eviction notice. They were out by month's end. "We needed to get into that space," says Deluce.
The mayor addresses this point. "It doesn't seem to be very appropriate public policy to allow Mr. Deluce to get control of the terminal and evict its only competitor," says Miller. "I think Torontonians understand that the Toronto Port Authority is a public agency that has become completely unaccountable to the public."
It was the eviction of Jazz that resulted in the cessation of commercial flights from the airport. The mayor argues that as there are no commercial flights today, any future flights constitute expansion. "We've requested that the [transport] minister not allow any expansion of the use of the airport until Mr. Tassé's review is complete."
For the record, councillor and mayoralty candidate Jane Pitfield says she attended a Porter presentation a few months ago. "They're starting up with just a destination of Ottawa," she says, which, of course, vastly underestimates the long-term plan. Her position? "Do I want the airline?" she asks back. "I would say at this point that as long as the conditions that are in place ... are respected, I do not have a problem with the airport."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lisa Raitt is in her jogging gear, sitting in her office above the Harbour 60 Steakhouse, about to take off on holiday. She paints an unflattering picture of Air Canada as a laggardly and uninterested corporate partner. "They let their infrastructure run down, they let their lease go month to month, they eliminated transportation links from the city," says Raitt. "We've operated at that airport for 16 years," responds Stuart. "And during that time our operation was dictated by demand. We've long recognized the potential to do more business from the island. The inconvenience of the ferry ride deterred customers ... The situation changed."
By the standards of conventional corporate governance, the port authority is a bizarre beast. Prior to Friday, when the transport minister announced five new board appointments, there was a lone board representative. How, in such a vacuum, could any organization meet the standard tests of accountability and transparency? This particular organization has been a chronic money loser: after a small profit on the outer harbour marina last year, the authority saw losses not only on the airport but also its port operations for a total loss of $3.4 million. That situation, asserts Raitt, will be rectified by having a "based carrier," that is, an airline that calls the island solely its home. That would be Porter.
Above Raitt's desk are framed editorial cartoons that mark the long, tumultuous drama of the bridge episode along with a framed, handprinted letter with this pithy message: "Close the Toronto Island Airport! It's a zit on the face of a beautiful city."
Certainly that has been the long-standing complaint of Community Air, the citizens' group that has been fighting both the island airport and the port authority. "The waterfront is perhaps the key to the transformation of the city," says Community Air chairman Bill Freeman. "Now we have Robert Deluce and the Toronto Port Authority expanding the airport right in the midst of all of this ... He's flying in the face of a whole new rebuilding of the city."
In April, the port authority and Lisa Raitt, along with a former board member and its current CFO, sued Community Air in Ontario superior court, alleging that Freeman and others defamed the group in a memo sent to Transport Minister Cannon that was also posted on the Community Air website. The memo ranged across a broad terrain, including the $35 million in conflict resolution paid by the feds. The plaintiffs seek damages of $850,000.
Community Air's statement of defence will be filed tomorrow. "If they [the port authority] think people are going to shut up because of this little thing they don't understand the dynamics of what's going on here," says Freeman. "[C]ommunity outrage here is getting to fever pitch." Then he adds, "If this thing goes ahead there will be continual political action."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bay St. money manager Ira Gluskin was sliding through Lobby on Thursday night, peering out through blue-tinted glasses, past the "flight attendants" and the wait staff serving French fries in Chinese takeout containers. "It's a very high-risk investment," says Gluskin of the airline business. Still, he's in. As a Porter investor that is. He recently flew out of the island airport to the Bigwin Inn at Lake of Bays and he liked the experience very much.
It's important to make mention of money at this juncture, given the airline industry's renowned reputation for destroying shareholder equity. "When anybody buys into a private company, why do they do it?" asks Gluskin. "Because they hope to grow it. See it pay dividends." He describes Deluce as "the most windup ..." before losing his train of thought. Then he says, "He's doing something for us."
The list of those who do not agree is long. Bob Deluce doesn't seem bothered. He's got an operating agreement he figures is pretty airtight. And he sure is creating buzz. And now he's standing at the Lobby bar seeming darned relaxed, like a passenger settling into an airline seat, readying for takeoff.
