This week, Porter ran a full-page ad offering low prices on flights to the locations they serve.  Of course, the lowest priced flights came with various conditions but those conditions aside, the lowest return fare, before fees and taxes, for example to Ottawa on October 28 is $98.  In other words, Porter puts $98 in its coffers to take to and return a passenger from our capital.

Interestingly, on October 28, 2006, Porter charged $240 for the same passage.  That is a difference of $142 that the Porter coffers are missing for the same seat.

Compare the difference between the two prices and the cost of oil then and now, and something doesn’t add up.  In October 2006, oil was $50.98 a barrel.  Oil traded this week at $109 a barrel.
 
Put another way, oil has more than doubled and the same fare is almost 2 ½ times less than it was two years ago.

Producing profits with this scenario is no less a miracle than that of the loaves and the fishes.

Bob Kotyk