Porter Airlines, which only a couple of years ago was a small turbo-prop-only regional carrier is spreading its now jet-powered wings even further by adding New York’s LaGuardia Airport to its destinations.
The airline is adding flights, up to three a day starting May 1, to Toronto Pearson, one of its Toronto hubs, enabling more use of its interline agreement with JetBlue, a major operator at LaGuardia. The connection will enable itineraries that route passengers on a single ticket through Toronto to Porter’s expanding network which now crosses Canada, or from Canada through LGA to JetBlue domestic destinations. Details are so far not announced.
Since slots at LaGuardia are tightly limited, it would appear that Porter has leased slots from another airline at the airport, possibly JetBlue. Porter’s previous New York flights have actually been between Newark Airport across the river in New Jersey, and have used turbo-prop planes on those flights to Toronto’s waterfront Billy Bishop Airport
UPDATE
The question of where Porter was able to find LaGuardia slots may indeed be a lease from JetBlue, which has now announced it’s dropping its six-a-day round-trip shuttle between LGA and Boston. The airline says it will use three of the slot pairs to add flights to Florida destinations and will lease the other three to another airline. That airline, it seems likely, is Porter.