Montreal Metropolitan Airport will welcome its first commercial passengers today as Porter Airlines launches service from the South Shore hub.<\/p>\n
A formal inauguration ceremony at the airport’s newly built terminal in Longueuil, Que., will mark the start of regular commercial operations, highlighted by the arrival of a Porter aircraft receiving a water salute from airport firefighters \u2014 a tradition in the aviation industry.<\/p>\n
Local and provincial dignitaries, including Longueuil Mayor Catherine Fournier and Quebec Tourism Minister Am\u00e9lie Dionne, are expected to attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony.<\/p>\n
Porter Airlines has invested hundreds of millions of dollars alongside infrastructure partner Macquarie to transform what was once known primarily as Saint-Hubert Airport into a commercial passenger hub.<\/p>\n
Beginning Monday, Porter plans to operate domestically, offering 138 weekly flights. The hub has the capacity to handle four million passengers each year.<\/p>\n
Porter chief executive Michael Deluce has described the facility as “Billy Bishop on steroids,” arguing its location on Montreal’s South Shore offers travellers a convenient alternative to Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport. The carrier predicts the airport could become one of the 10 busiest in Canada within two years.<\/p>\n
Porter was launched in 2006 by Deluce’s father Robert \u2014 he remains the executive chairman \u2014 who used Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport as a base to offer service from the city’s downtown.<\/p>\n
The ambitious expansion comes amid broader challenges facing the airline industry, including higher fuel costs which has pushed up ticket prices across the globe and threatened to reduce sales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Montreal Metropolitan Airport will welcome its first commercial passengers today as Porter Airlines launches service from the South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3168,33953,33952,33951,33954,50,33926,10946,8496],"class_list":["post-88959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-billy-bishop","tag-catherine-fournier","tag-commercial-operations","tag-commercial-passengers","tag-inauguration-ceremony","tag-montreal","tag-montreal-metropolitan-airport","tag-pierre-elliott-trudeau-international-airport","tag-porter-airlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}