Porter Airlines' operation of CSeries is closely linked to the future of Toronto City Centre Airport

Now that the hype around Porter Airlines' conditional order for Bombardier CS100 narrowbodies has dimmed, questions are arising about whether the bid to expand its footprint at Billy Bishop Toronto City Centre Airport will succeed, and whether the CSeries will ever make an appearance in Porter's livery.

Porter opted to outline its plans for the future in Apr-2013 after Air Canada and WestJet spent much of 2012 touting proposed launches of their respective subsidiaries, Air Canada rouge and Encore. rouge is a low-cost carrier operating to trans-Atlantic and eventually to Caribbean leisure destinations, while Encore flies Q400s to Fort St John, Nanaimo with new service to Brandon scheduled to debut in Sep-2013.

Porter is strategically placing its bets on gaining authority to operate the Canadian built 108-seat CS100 from its Toronto City Centre base, which is much closer to downtown than Toronto Pearson, approximately 29km distant. Since its launch of operations from City Centre in 2006 with Bombardier Q400 turboprops, City Centre's annual passenger movements have jumped from under 200,000 to almost 2 million.