OTTAWA — Last night’s Ottawa-edition of ‘Mr. Porter’s House Party’ was less about introducing the airline to the market – as was the case with last summer’s party in Vancouver – and more about Porter’s significant investment developing Ottawa International Airport (YOW) as a hub over the past 12 to 18 months. Ottawa has a special place in Porter’s heart.
It was the first destination on the airline’s route map back in 2006, when the airline first launched out of YTZ. Almost 20 years later, Ottawa is now Porter’s fastest growing hub outside of Toronto. Ahead of yesterday’s party, Travelweek had the chance to connect with Kevin Jackson, President of Porter Airlines.
“We’ve built out Ottawa to be a strong east-west connecting hub for Canada and now down into Florida as well,” explained Jackson. “You’ll continue to see us expand our destinations out of Ottawa through the next several years. We’re currently up to 16 nonstops out of Canada’s capital, in 2023 we served about 750,000 passengers.
This year that will grow to two million passengers and will be even higher next year. By this summer, we will be the largest carrier out of Ottawa based on flights and seats in the market.” Jackson continued: “I believe people in Ottawa are happy that Porter is choosing to expand its product in that market and to offer nonstops that were historically not offered.
Typically, from Ottawa, travellers would have to go through Montreal or Toronto to get t.
