Toronto City Council will vote at its May 7 meeting if it should proceed with a city staff report on Porter Airlines’ request for two amendments to the Tripartite Agreement, which governs the operation of Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. Porter has offered to underwrite reasonable costs of such a report to assist in it returning to council on a timely basis.

By voting to proceed with the preparation of a staff report on Porter’s proposed growth plans, City Council can ensure that a full, open and transparent dialogue is conducted for the benefit of all over the coming weeks.

Porter has outlined its plans to spread our wings to destinations such as Calgary, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami, Orlando, the Caribbean, and some other locations across North America. To make those plans a reality, we looked globally for the appropriate aircraft to operate from Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport and chose a special whisper jet that has been developed and is being built in Canada.

We like this airplane so much that we signed a conditional purchase agreement for 30 of them at a cost of $2.1 billion; a significant investment in the Canadian aerospace industry. Our growth plans also include the purchase of six more Bombardier Q400s, which we selected originally because its quiet sound profile is ideal for operation at this airport. The Q400 is assembled in Toronto.

To fly the CS100 from Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport to our potential destinations, we require the support of the three signatories to the Tripartite Agreement that has controlled the airport’s operation since 1983. We are respectfully requesting that the City of Toronto, the federal government and the Toronto Port Authority approve an amendment to operate this whisper jet from the airport, despite the fact that a jet ban was imposed 30 years ago when jets were noisy and not environmentally friendly. We are also asking for a 168-metre extension into water on both ends of the existing runway – an extension that is within the airport’s existing boundaries and will not affect the boating community or change the location of buoys currently in place.

We’ve known since we began exploring our vision for these growth plans that obtaining the two amendments wouldn’t be automatic. At our announcement, we stated clearly that our aircraft order is conditional on these approvals, and we want to have open and transparent discussions with all involved in our proposal. We welcome a public discourse that goes beyond the three parties to the agreement and includes a true cross section of opinion … from home owners to passengers, and downtown residents to those who make their living from this airport.

We didn’t make our plans known in advance because we knew we couldn’t proceed unless we had an aircraft that could operate quietly from Toronto’s urban airport and stay within the airport’s existing marine boundary. The CS100 is such an airplane. It is comparably quiet to the Q400 and has unmatched performance capabilities. We’re proud to make it the cornerstone of this initiative.

The dialogue on our two requests has only just begun. Porter is proud of its seven-year track record and all that has been accomplished since 2006. We’ve kept our promises. We’ve been a responsible operator and a good neighbour. We’ve flown over 190,000 flights to and from Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, carried more than 8 million passengers, and have helped deliver over $2 billion a year in economic benefits to our city. Porter has created 1,400 jobs in the past seven years and, if allowed to proceed, we will create direct employment for an additional 1,000 people.

We developed our growth plans with care and consideration. The potential benefits for the City of Toronto and the travelling public are significant and we believe we have earned the opportunity to have our requests debated, fully and openly, with all of the facts available.

We welcome scrutiny by councillors and city staff and urge approval to proceed with the staff report as the all-important first step.

Robert Deluce is the president and CEO of Porter Airlines.