Flights to Toronto sought

Peterborough Airport launches online survey to gauge local interest in regular flights to Billy Bishop Airport

If you’d ever like to hop on a plane to downtown Toronto, Peterborough Airport wants to hear from you.

The airport is considering a new 20-minute flight between Peterborough and Billy Bishop Airport – but only if there’s enough interest.

The airport has a survey on the city’s website meant to determine whether there’s a market here for flights to Toronto.

In 2016, a carrier was offering daily flights from Peterborough to Kitchener, Ottawa and Montreal – but service stopped after just eight weeks.

“They didn’t have a sound business plan to make it work,” said Trent Gervais, manager of the Peterborough Airport.

NextJet, based in Richmond, B.C., was offering the flights.

Gervais said there were plenty of passengers on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays – but the rest of the time, planes were empty.

There’s no particular carrier in mind this time, Gervais said.

But he thinks local people might want to fly to a business meeting in downtown Toronto, or use the service to connect with a Porter Airlines flight out of Billy Bishop Airport.

Gervais said it’s already being done successfully in Niagaraon-the-Lake, where there are four flights daily to Billy Bishop Airport.

The service was introduced a year ago, according to Toronto media reports. It takes 12 minutes to fly from Niagara to Toronto on an eight-seater plane and costs $99, states the carrier’s website.

“They’re doing what we’d like to be doing – and they’re doing it successfully,” Gervais said of Niagara.

Gervais said it’s still unclear when flights from Peterborough could potentially be re-introduced. He said they’ll need to collect data from the survey and ensure there’s a market for the flights.

The survey has nine questions: for example, it asks how often local people travel to places such as Boston, New York City, Halifax or Chicago (destinations served by Porter).

The survey can be filled out online on the city’s website, and there are paper copies available at City Hall. It will be available until Oct. 25.

NOTE: To take the survey, visit: http://www.surveymonkey. com/r/travelfromptboairport