Canada’s Porter Airlines has placed firm orders for 25 more Embraer 195-E2s – on top of 50 previous orders – in a deal valued at $2.1 billion.
Embraer disclosed the deal on 29 November, saying Toronto-based Porter still holds options to order another 25 E195-E2s.
The carrier has already received 24 of the type, meaning its unfilled orders stand at 51 E195-E2s.
“We entered a new era when we began operating the E195-E2 earlier this year,” says Porter chief executive Michael Deluce. “The jet is exceeding our expectations, especially in terms of fuel burn.”
Porter expects to operate 50 of the type by the end of next year, in addition to its existing fleet of De Havilland Canada Dash 8s. So far, the 132-seat twinjets are mainly based in Toronto and Ottawa.
The all-economy carrier has used its growing fleet of E195-E2s to build a transcontinental network that includes cities in Western Canada and the USA. It recently added flights to Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and touched down in Fort Myers, Orlando and Tampa for the first time.
Porter plans to add new routes to Mexico and the Caribbean, and a recently announced joint venture with Montreal-based vacation specialist Air Transat is intended to feed Porter’s North American network into Air Transat’s transatlantic flights.
The E-Jet deliveries have been transforming Porter into an airline with broader horizons, Kevin Jackson, Porter’s chief commercial officer, tells FlightGlobal on 29 November.
“We took our first aircraft right at the first of the year and we’ll have 29 aircraft by the end of December,” he says. ”It’s pretty aggressive – 29 jets by the end of this year to match 29 Dash 8s we’ve had in our network for a number of years.”
The company has been able – at least so far – to hire pilots fast enough to operate the incoming jets “We know that from a pilot perspective, you will get in the left seat of a jet much faster on Porter than any other carrier in Canada today as a result of this growth,” Jackson says. “Our captain and first officer pipelines for the E195s and the Dash 8s currently remain strong.”
Looking head, Porter will likely convert its 25 remaining E195-E2 options into firm orders, as Jackson says the airline’s goal is to eventually operate an 100-strong fleet of the aircraft.
