Porter Airlines perks up with solid numbers... City of Toronto continuing idiocy

Good for the folks at Porter, who continue to carve out a very solid niche in a tough market. Figures for June show Porter Airlines had 64.6 per cent of seats filled with paying customers (called a load factor by people smarter than me).

That's not so high on its own (more in a minute on the competition) but it's far above the 52.2 per cent figure they managed in June of 2010. Chairman Robert Deluce told the Globe and Mail it's their highest mark for ANY month ever; surpassing the 63.9 per cent figure they had last August.

The Air Canada strike might have helped, but it's certainly good news for Deluce, who's talking about expanding to Washington D.C. and perhaps Philadelphia, as well as keeping an eye on spots such as London, North Bay and Timmins.

"Largely, our competition is Air Canada in the East, and we seem to be faring quite well," Deluce said.

Air Canada on Wednesday said its June passenger load factor was 84.2 per cent, down a bit from 84.7 per cent a year ago. WestJet dropped substantially, falling from 78.2 per cent in June of 2010 to 75.7 per cent this past month.

WestJet CEO Gregg Saretsky tried to paint a sunny picture on the June numbers.

"Although loads were slightly down for June, ... We are pleased with the advanced bookings for July and August, and the pricing environment continues to be strong," he said.

CITY OF TORONTO - UNHEARD OF STUPIDITY

I had a remarkable run with the City of Toronto over a fallen tree a few years back; a real comedy of errors. This isn't that bad, but it does make me wonder what city officials are smoking when they tell us how efficient they are.

Last year, the city came to my house in North Toronto and dug up my lawn to replace some old pipes. That's good. They left a huge, gaping hole in a lawn that I had finally got looking great after years of work. That's bad, although unavoidable.

I was told the city would come by and lay down some sod. I waited. I waited some more. Finally, I called. The person on the other end of the phone said, "We can't come lay down sod because we haven't dug up your pipes yet."

I couldn't believe it. I explained there was a six-inch deep and four-foot-wide and six-foot-long hole in my lawn. I was not imagining this.

They took note, but after several days there was still no sod. So I went to Home Depot and bought grass seed and soil and did it myself.

Now, last week, the city came and dug up the sidewalk in front of my house. It was perfectly fine. It wasn't mint condition sidewalk but it wasn't cracked or sprouting weeds big enough to hide small children under or anything like that.

The sidewalk on the other part of my house? Around the corner? That's a mess. Been that way for some time; all raised up in one portion and creating a slope you could nearly ski down. THAT portion they left alone, figuring instead to fix something that didn't need repairing in the first place.

I guess they were worried that their digging might harm my grass, so whenthey had finished the work they nicely laid down some soil along the edge of the sidewalk. Nice, but instead of sprinkling it just where it was needed they dumped bucketfulls of the stuff in a six-inch strip all along the new sidewalk, thus burying the grass I had worked so hard to get back into shape under a thick layer of dirt.

I spent a half hour this morning scraping the dirt off my perfectly good grass and onto the sidewalk, then sweeping it up and, finally, hosing down the sidewalk so that gleaming new patch of cement would look all pretty and nice and so much better than my neighbours sidewalk and make them jealous and confirm the City of Toronto's status as having sidewalks you could not only fry an egg on in summer but WANT to use as a cooking surface because they're all so damned nice and all but certain to attract worldwide attention from major news publications and thus further enrich our city by attracting investment from China and India and maybe even Calgary if they didn't hate us so much.

Have a niceday.

 

Comments

[Rob]

Why would someone from Calgary hate Toronto? (I've got a few reasons for you if you like, I wonder if anybody from TO knows why?)