[P]orter Airlines Inc., the Canadian company that provided winter flights between Burlington International Airport and Toronto, will not offer its flights this year because passenger numbers have dropped and it can’t find a ground crew to service its planes.
Porter had about 2,000 outbound passengers in its first winter, but only about 600 last year – just .1 percent of the airport’s total traffic. Meanwhile, passenger traffic overall has grown at the Burlington airport, with an increase of 17 percent so far this year over 2017, said Nick Longo, deputy director of aviation for administration at the airport.
In February, Frontier will begin twice-weekly direct flight service between Burlington and Orlando.
Last January, the state created a promotion in partnership with Porter that included lodging packages to encourage Canadian visits. Canada accounts for 87 percent of all international visits to Vermont, according to the governor’s office.
Porter, which has provided its winter service since 2011, ran into complications with servicing because Burlington’s customs and immigration facility were designed for small, private flights, Longo said. Porter’s 67-passenger planes spent extra time at the customs and immigration building before being towed to the terminal, creating extra costs in ground crew servicing.
“This really had to do with some of the logistics behind how Porter operates at the airport,” he said.
Longo said he expects the matter to be resolved with preclearance, when customs and immigration can be completed on the Toronto end of the flight, before planes to Vermont take off.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has preclearance locations in Ireland, Aruba, The Bahamas, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; and several Canadian cities, according to the agency. These serviced 15 percent of all commercial air travelers to the U.S. in 2016, about 18 million people. Congress passed a preclearance bill sponsored by U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Canada has passed a similar law, and now negotiations are underway to get preclearance started between Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport and Burlington International Airport, said Leahy spokesperson David Carle.
Longo thinks this will be resolved in time for Porter to resume its winter flights next year.
Next year, “our intention is to go back in, and we’re going to be working to find the resources to support those flights,” said Brad Cicero, a spokesperson for Porter. The airline flies to 22 destinations. “We’re going to work with everyone else who has an interest in that to make that happen.”
Burlington will retain its description as an international airport even without its Toronto flight, Longo said.
“We’re a port of entry, because U.S. Customs and Border Patrol are here at the airport, and that designates the international,” he said. He added that many international general aviation, corporate, and maintenance flights use the airport as well.
“We do have Pratt & Whitney Canada in the airfield and the aircraft come in for engine repair,” he said.
