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“That decision kind of shut the door on future material growth at the island airport,” said Robert Kokonis, president and managing director of airline consultancy AirTrav Inc. “Porter’s in a bit of a bind right now, quite frankly.”

Porter’s near-exclusive dominance of Billy Bishop — the airline holds 85 per cent of the airport’s 202 slots, with the remainder going to Air Canada — has been a boon, making it an attractive option for business travellers who work downtown and want to avoid the lengthy drive to Pearson International Airport in Mississauga, Ont.

“If imitation is a form of flattery, then to some extent we’re flattered that we’ve played a part in resetting the industry…”

However, the airport’s proximity to a huge and ever-growing number of condos has also made it a popular target for complaints about noise, pollution and traffic. The prospect of jets replacing some of Porter’s existing turboprops, and the longer runway that would be necessary to accommodate them, have only exacerbated such concerns.

Deluce is sanguine about the Liberals’ decision to maintain the ban on jets, referring to it as one of many “speed bumps” that Porter has faced.

“Economic conditions change, market conditions change, you have fuel prices moving around on you, there could be political or other interference — those are all things you have to take into consideration,” he said.

“It’s a business where there’s always something happening and you can have the very best business plan in place and you still need a certain amount of flexibility.”

Flexibility is something Porter’s business plan has had from the beginning. Before the airline’s launch, it raised $126 million — in the second-largest financing for a new airline after JetBlue Airways Corp., which raised US$130 million for its launch in 2000 — from investors that included GE Asset Management, Dancap Private Equity, EdgeStone Capital Partners and Borealis Infrastructure.