Canada’s Porter Airlines Will Now Restart on Sept. 8

A year and a half after its flight, Porter Airlines will return to the air.

Porter on Monday confirmed that it will once again welcome passengers onboard starting on Sept. 8. The regional Canada carrier, which last flew passengers in March 2020, had originally planned to restart in March 2021 before pushing the date back to June and then again to July.

Now, Porter says that it will return in three phases, starting with domestic flights between Halifax, Moncton, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec City, St. John’s, NL, Thunder Bay, and Toronto. It will then add flights to the U.S. on Sept. 17 with service to Boston, Chicago, New York, and Washington.

Porter said that more than 500 of its team members will be recalled during its first face of restart and more will be added in the following months.

The carrier’s CEO and president, Michael Deluce, called the news “the moment our team members, passengers, and the communities we serve have been waiting for.”

“The pandemic has progressed to the point that we can now begin restoring service across our network, focused around our main based at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. Being grounded for more than a year has been incredibly difficult for everyone involved,” Deluce said.

“In the true Porter fashion, our team members have displayed remarkable levels of commitment, engagement, and optimism over this uncertain period of time, despite the vast majority being unable to work. While deciding to suspend our service was the most difficult decision we’ve made, announcing a restart of flights is the first step in a recovery process that includes recalling hundreds of team members and welcoming back passengers,” he added.

Porter had been generating buzz prior to the pandemic with convenient flights out of Toronto’s close-in airport and its low fares. It had been carrying close to 3% of Canadian air travel and was part of a blossoming low-fare Canadian carrier expansion that included Air Canada’s Rouge and WestJet’s Swoop.