Canadian carrier Porter airlines plans to grow its transborder presence next year, noting in its most recent traffic results release that “a sixth U.S. market is…anticipated by spring.” While the airline didn’t provide any further details, it is worth pointing out that Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Washington, DC are listed as potential destinations on the carriers route map in its inflight magazine. In the United States, Porter serves Boston, Chicago (Midway), and Newark with multiple daily flights, and also has seasonal flights to Burlington and Myrtle Beach.
Meanwhile, 2011 marked dramatic growth for Porter, with a 35.9% year-over-year traffic increase on a 19.2% increase in capacity, resulting in a 7.5 point load factor boost, to 61.7%. And that load factor increase was certainly seen on the carrier’s big three transborder routes. Here’s the load factors on those routes for the first six months of the year (the most recent data available at the moment), as per the DOT:
While load factor growth is certainly nice to see, it doesn’t always equate with profitability. It is worth noting, however, that The Globe and Mail reported last month that privately-held Porter would turn it first annual profit in 2011.
Obviously the narrowbody market (and the huge number of orders for the A320neo and the 737MAX) was one of the biggest stories in 2011. A common question about these narrowbodies, however, is if these aircraft serve as adequate replacement for the existing models flying around today – especially the 757. As The Street reported in August, this question appears to be in the minds of airline management teams as well:
…[US Airways CFO Derek] Kerr plans to talk with Airbus executives in an effort to determine whether the Airbus A321neo might be configured to offer range and power similar to the 757. “That’s what we’re trying to get them to do, to give it some more legs,” he said. The carrier has asked Airbus to offer extended operations capabilities for the aircraft so that it can operate on the longer, over-water flights.
I was recently poking around some DOT traffic data, was able to examine exactly how many 757 departures were of the longer-range variety. Naturally, I looked at 2011 (June was selected because it’s the latest month for international data at the moment), but I also decided to compare this to 2004, the year before blended winglets for the 757 went into service.
While the 757 is still predominantly used on routes that are (generally) no longer than a domestic transcontinental flight, the type has only seen growth in departures on longer-haul flights. Flights 3,000 miles or longer represented a mere 1.5% of total 757-200 departures in 2004, but represented 9.1% of flights in June 2011.
In recent years the 757 has certainly found a new role as an aircraft that can serve thin routes across the Atlantic and in other markets — it will be interesting if the latest narrowbodies from Boeing and Airbus will be able to perform the same function.
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