Porter to provide passenger flights out of Montreal's Saint-Hubert Airport

Porter Airlines is planning to develop a new terminal at the Montreal Saint-Hubert Airport, with a goal of serving more than 4m passengers per year. The airline carrier made the announcement Monday morning at a news conference at the airport in South Shore Longueuil, saying it will now serve two airports in the Montreal area: Trudeau International (YUL) and Saint-Hubert (YHU). Porter is planning more than 10 possible routes across Canada, including connections to its two hubs in Toronto. The nine-gate, 21,000 square-metre terminal will include state-of-the-art passenger and baggage processing, as well as food and beverage concessions and retail vendors. "We're not talking about a huge Taj Mahal type of terminal. It’s an efficient, simple building. For us it's a big change. We're switching from some kind of a private airport where there were flights schools and some FBOs [fixed-base operators] and some private flights and we're going to switch to a real, domestic airport," said Yanic Roy, managing director, of the Montreal-Saint-Hubert Airport. Aircraft flying out of the terminal would include the 78-seat De Havilland Dash 8-400 and the 132-seat Embraer E195-E2. The project is expected to create more than 500 permanent jobs, including full-time positions within terminal and airline operations, and the establishment of a new pilot and flight attendant crew base. The plan follows a similar strategy to the one employed at Toronto's Billy Bishop Airport, which now serves 3m passengers every year and generates $3b of annual economic impact. Billy Bishop airport is minutes from Toronto's downtown core, much closer than the international Pearson airport. The project will begin in mid 2023 and is expected to be completed by the end of 2024. The announcement comes as Porter continues to expand its fleet, aiming to more than double it from 36 to 79 by 2025 amid intense domestic competition.<br/>