Give the runway an extra 336 metres for jets to land and the Billy Bishop Toronto City Centre Airport could see airlines clamouring for takeoff and landing slots — dramatically increasing plane traffic on the waterfront.

Both WestJet and Air Canada say access to the island airport needs to expand beyond Porter Airlines, which has 172 of the 202 currently available slots. Air Canada’s regional carrier Jazz operates the remaining 30.

Should Porter’s push to use the Bombardier CS100 jets be approved by the city, the federal government and the Toronto Port Authority, they will need about 50 slots for their new routes to destinations like Orlando and Vancouver.

Those slots will either come from what they have now or Porter will work with the TPA to determine whether more could be opened, says Brad Cicero, a Porter Airlines spokesperson. (The number of slots is dependant on strict noise restrictions, says the TPA. No new slots are available at this time).

Even before Porter’s announcement last week, WestJet had been considering ways to expand their business travellers market by using the island airport, says Bob Cummings, WestJet’s executive vice-president of sales, marketing and guest experience.

They have a new fleet of Bombardier Q400s rolling out in central and eastern Canada in just over a year as part of their Encore regional line, planes that are already cleared for use at Billy Bishop.

But, if jets are allowed, they believe the smallest models of their fleet of Boeing 737s could be as quiet as the Bombardier CS100s.

Even so, WestJet is concerned that the runway expansion Porter is demanding will not be long enough to safely accommodate a variety of jets, particularly in bad weather.

“If you’re going to have jets in, let’s make sure there will be competition,” said Cummings.

Allowing jets to use the airport at all is expressly forbidden under the tripartite agreement meant to protect the residents along the waterfront already agitated by noise and traffic generated by the growing airport.

Runway extensions are also banned.

But if those two items clear a city council rife with opposition, both Air Canada and WestJet say Porter shouldn’t be the only airline to reap the benefit.

Air Canada — which launched and lost a lawsuit against the Toronto Port Authority in 2011 over the allocation of the majority of the slots to Porter — maintains that all airlines should have equal access to the “public facility.”

They are in the early stages of renewing their “narrow body fleet” of jets that carry 100-160 passengers. Among the options under consideration are same Bombardier C-Series planes as Porter’s, a spokesperson said Monday.

The threat of increased airline traffic is pushing waterfront residents and community activists to renew campaigns to stop the growth of the airport as a commercial hub.

“People have been working to pry this airport open (for commercial use) forever,” says Barry Iler, spokesperson for CommunityAIR. He said every time the tripartite agreement that governs airport expansion gives an inch, the airlines take a mile.

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“This will make it totally worse . . . We won’t have a waterfront that’s usable for residential and recreational purposes,” he says.

“But,” he adds, “if Porter thinks they can pry (the airport) open for jets just for them, I think they’re wrong.”

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