10 WINGS | March/April 2015 WWW.WINGSMAGAZINE.COMON THE
F LY
AIRPORTS
BILLY BISHOP
TERMINAL SOLDPorter Airlines’ passenger terminal at
Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport has been
sold to Nieuport Aviation Infrastructure
Partners, a consortium that includes
InstarAGF Asset Management and Larry
Tanenbaum, chair of Maple Leafs Sports
and Entertainment Limited, who owns
the Toronto Maple Leafs and Raptors.
Billy Bishop is Canada’s ninth busiest
airport and handled 2.4 million passen-
gers this year. Phase one of Porters’ pur-
pose-built terminal opened in 2010. An
$82.5 million passenger tunnel, which
will serve as an alternative to the ferry
linking the island airport with the main-
land is scheduled to open this spring.
The passenger tunnel will be managed by
the Toronto Port Authority (TPA), which
operates the city centre airport.
Porter Airlines, which operates a fleetof Bombardier Q400 turboprops put the
terminal building up for sale last August
to concentrate on its core business,
including securing City Hall approval
to relax a jet restriction and expand the
main runway to accommodate a fleet of
up to 30 CSeries jets.
The agreement is a sale-leaseback deal
that will enable Porter to continue op-
erating out of the convenient downtown
airport, where it holds most of the land-
ing and takeoff slots. The purchase price
was not disclosed but is speculated to be
more than $700 million. Airports con-
tinue to be a sought after asset by fund
managers, and the Ontario Teachers’
Pension Fund recently increased its stake
in the U.K.’s Birmingham Airport to
48.25 per cent (see interview with CACpresident Daniel-Robert Gooch). Greg
Smith, who co-owns InstarAGF told the
Globe and Mail that airports are a sought
after asset class that are increasingly
hard to come by. Especially in Canada
where major airports are locked into lo-
cal airport authorities.
At the same time that Nieuport Avia-
tion wants in, Air Canada is considering
pulling out. Air Canada operates only 15
flights to Montreal out of Billy Bishop,
and has been unsuccessful in acquir-
ing additional slots. Air Canada’s traffic
and load factor at the airport increased
in 2014 over the previous year, but is
“assessing the viability of Billy Bishop
operations based on current imposed
terminal rates and terms.”
It is not clear who would take over
Air Canada’s 30 slots. The TPA and may
want to sell slots to an operator other
than Porter to avoid the appearance of
what Air Canada chief executive Calin
Rovinescu has already described as Por-
ter’s playground.