Canada’s Porter Airlines set to serve 5 Florida cities. Beer, wine, Wi-Fi come with fare

Canadian discount airline Porter Airlines will land for the first time in Florida next week, kicking off eventual flight service to five cities in the Sunshine state, including Miami and Fort Lauderdale.

Touting itself as offering passengers an “elevated economy experience,” Porter runs counter to the airline industry in that with the price of airfares comes beer, wine, Wi-Fi and snacks — and there’s none of the sometimes dreaded middle seats in the cabin.

The first flight, a nonstop departure from Toronto Pearson International Airport to Tampa International Airport, will leave on Nov. 1. The next day, daily service between those two cities will start, Brad Cicero, a Porter spokesman, said in an interview.

Then Porter will add more daily routes: Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers to Toronto on Nov. 11, Orlando International Airport to Ottawa on Nov. 21, and Orlando to Toronto on Nov. 22.

After that, South Florida airports will start seeing Porter airplanes flying daily nonstop direct flights between Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Ottawa beginning Nov. 30 and Fort Lauderdale and Toronto starting Dec. 1. Finally, beginning Dec. 13, Porter will take off with daily flights from Miami International Airport to Toronto and back.

Florida “is a really important market for Canadians,” Cicero said. “We believe the demand is there.”

In 2022, Canada was Miami-Dade County’s third-largest foreign source of overnight visitors, according to a report this spring by the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, trailing only Colombia and Brazil.

While a low-cost airline, Porter hopes to stand out in Florida —where there are plenty of airline options — for its frills. Wine and beer at no extra cost served to passengers in a glass is an example. Other airlines typically charge passengers for alcoholic beverages. For a higher fare, meals, extra legroom, and pre-mixed cocktails are available.

All of Porter’s flights between Florida and Canada will be on 132-seat Embraer E195-E2 planes with cabins designed as an all-economy class with a two seat-by-two seat configuration. That means no middle seats on each flight.

Porter’s service to Florida also will mark Porter’s first commercial use of these planes in the United States, said Valtecio Alencar, an Embraer spokesman. The jets are assembled in Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil.

The Canadian discount airline’s pending debut at Miami and Fort Lauderdale airports comes as these airports gain passenger volumes and new or expanded service by domestic and foreign airlines. For example, American Airlines, the largest airline in the world and biggest by market share at Miami airport, and Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, among many others, are adding routes and flights.

Earlier this month, Fort Lauderdale airport started construction of a $404 million fifth airline terminal. It will cover 230,000 square feet and should be finished in 2026 to handle 4 to 5 million more passengers. Through August of this year, 23.7 million passengers have gone through the airport.

Meanwhile, Mexican discount airline Viva Aerobus said recently it will start flying three flights a week — Monday, Wednesday, and Friday — from Miami airport to Monterrey starting on July 1, 2024. One day later, it will start four weekly flights — Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday — between Miami and Merida. The airline will fly planes with room for 186 and 240 passengers.

Barcelona-based airline LEVEL said recently it would begin three weekly flights between Barcelona and Miami on March 31, 2024. German low-cost airline Condor Airlines announced it would start flying three times a week next May between Miami airport and Frankfurt.

Porter, which started operating in 2006, and began flying to Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, and Newark in 2008 — albeit with airplanes that couldn’t fly as long as the Embraer E195-E2s — expects to serve one or two alcoholic drinks per flight to an individual passenger, Cicero said. But if a passenger wants more drinks, he or she can ask and will receive them.

The Porter official cautioned that, “people have to drink responsibly.”