Limits on the expansion of the Island Airport derive from the tripartite agreement, which establishes Noise Exposure Forecast (NEF) Contours that cannot be exceeded. NEF Contours are calculated by software and are based on the intensity and frequency of noise from aircraft landing and taking off. The maximum number of slots ((landings and take-offs) at the Island Airport are derived from the NEF Contour calculations.

Based on information obtained by CommunityAIR, the slots available for large turboprops are either :

• 97 per Transport Canada on July 21, 1998: - based on the use of the Dash 100 not the Q400 which is a much larger aircraft, or
• 112 per consultant Sypher Mueller’s December 2001 report to the TPA – but states that even at that level, the NEF Contour would be breached, or
• 120 per City of Toronto in 2003 and 2006 Tassé Report, or
• 167 per airport consultant Pryde Schropp McComb in a 2005 report to Porter’s investors.

And on December 24, 2009 the Toronto Port Authority stated that its current consultant "anticipates" that up to 212 daily take offs and landings of large turbo prop aircraft are permissible at the Island Airport.　 No details of their study were released.

Given this wild variety of numbers, an official and peer-reviewed NEF Contour study is overdue. The TPA’s study is not that.

Until such a study is concluded, no prospective user of the Island Airport should count on capacity being available to it.

In fact, it may well be that the current use of the airport is at the limits of what is permitted under the agreement that governs the airport.

In 1983 when the City of Toronto was under pressure to allow commercial air service out of the island airport, a clause was put into the Tripartite Agreement with the aim of controlling the level of noise that the busier airport would produce. Rather than putting a finite limit on the number of flights landing and taking off, the clause specified a Noise Exposure Forecast (NEF) contour that had the effect of limiting the total airport activity.

To determine a NEF contour, Transport Canada uses its software to analyze the noise levels of aircraft and the number of noise events in order to establish an objective way of measuring the impact of aircraft landing and takeoff noise in areas around airports.

Other sources of noise are, unfortunately, not included in calculating a NEF contour: it excludes bird dispersal cannon and engine maintenance run-ups, both of which are major irritants to the surrounding communities.

The purpose of the NEF contour is to encourage compatible land use planning in the vicinity of airports. As indicated above, it was included in the Tripartite Agreement to ensure the level of island airport use did not conflict with the City’s plan for the waterfront. That, at least, is the theory. Reality, however, can be a stern teacher.

In 1995, with the federal government getting out of the airport business and the provincial government cutting ferry subsidies, the island airport’s future looked grim. The Canadian Urban Institute took it upon itself to sponsor a two-day conference on Toronto’s City Centre Airport.

Judging by the record of its proceedings, Toronto’s City Centre Airport: What is its Future Role?, the event seemed to galvanize the airport’s proponents to such a degree that while there may not now be the bridge that was called for then, there is certainly the expanded airport that the attendees demanded. But, how could this be, given the NEF contour limitation in the Tripartite Agreement?

It appears the NEF calculation is a very strangely elastic way of determining the number of flights permitted at the airport.

1998: 97 Slots

In 1989, as part of its obligation under the Tripartite Agreement, Transport Canada produced an NEF contour map for the island airport using traffic figures at that time. According to Transport Canada documents, new noise planning contours were prepared in 1990 but never formalized. The 1989 effort was Transport Canada’s last official one. CommunityAIR has not been able to access the 1989 data.

The matter of updating the NEF 25 contour lay dormant until 1998 when the TCCA manager (still under the Toronto Harbour Commission) advised Transport Canada that four new air operators would start service. A July 21, 1998 Transport Canada, Ontario Region Civil Aviation document states, 

            "In accordance with the Tripartite Agreement, the available number of daily large turbo propeller-driven movements for allocation is a total of 97. The number proposed for the new services totals 84. The 97 available movements for allocation include a strategic reserve of 15%, to ensure that the NEF contour is not exceeded."

The 97 available movements figure was repeated in Transport Canada documents dated September 15, 1998 and April 7, 1999. The number 97 stood for three years.

2001: 112 Slots

A new NEF calculation did not come until December, 2001 when TPA consultants Sypher Mueller, in their roadmap for Island Airport expansion: Toronto City Centre Airport - General Aviation and Airport Feasibility Study - Small Footprint - Big Impact analyzed a number of expansion alternatives, including a "2020 turboprop expansion" of up to 112 large turboprop (i.e. Q400) slots.

In modelling future noise it assumed that (at page 79)

This assumption is wrong, as the airport operates from 6:45 a.m. until 11:00 p.m. Night-time landings and takeoffs are weighted far more heavily in NEF contour analysis, given their much greater impact on abutting communities.

This suggests that the 112 figure should be lower still.

Sypher Mueller‘s conclusion (at page 79):

Porter has already exceeded – or will soon - the 112 slot threshold.

To CommunityAIR’s knowledge, none of these mitigation measures have been implemented.

Even then, noise mitigation measures cannot be used to bring the airport’s NEF Contours into compliance with the tripartite agreement.

Somehow, the 97 daily flights in 1999 expanded to 112 daily flights in the space of three years.

In 2003, a Clause embodied in Report No. 6 of the Policy and Finance Committee, as adopted by the Council of the City of Toronto at its meeting held on June 24, 25 and 26 stated,

It was on the basis of this statement, among others, that City Council agreed to settle a spurious lawsuit brought against it by the TPA, and to amend the tripartite agreement to allow a bridge to be built.

112 became 120 in just two years.

2006: 167 Slots, reduced to 120?

Roger Tassé in his October 2006 report on the Toronto Port Authority, at page 60, states:

At the time of the Tassé report release, there had been no public disclosure that 167 slots had been contemplated by – or promised to – Porter.

However, the number of allowable daily movements would change once again.

On March 2, 2006, Robert Deluce, President and CEO of Porter Airlines emailed Michael Stephenson, Transport Canada’s Acting Regional Director General – Ontario on the subject of the TCCA NEF Update Final Report. Attached to the email was a 12-page report.

The report was prepared by airport consultants Pryde Schropp for potential Porter Airlines investors, Edgestone Capital, Borealis Infrastructure Management and Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, "to test the capacity for a Dash-8 and Q400 scenario" and "to determine the maximum number of scheduled Dash-8 and Q400 aircraft movements available within the …NEF Contour".

The scenarios examine various combinations of general aviation (private plane traffic) and commercial turboprop use, concluding that 120 slots for Dash-8 and Q400 is the limit if general aviation expands, but 167 slots (25 Dash-8 and 145 Q400) could be achieve through a combination of

• Constraining general aviation
• requiring the Q400 to land at the unusually steep angle of 5.5° and
• prohibiting flight schools from the airport.

The 167 figure appears to have been the minimum requirement of those investors.

On March 21, 2006, then TPA airport manager Bill Yule wrote Dave Bayliss, Regional Manager, Aerodromes and Air Navigation, Transport Canada, about the Porter investors’ Pryde Schropp data, requesting Transport Canada investigate the methods and practices used to arrive at the movement limits:

On March 27, 2006, Tom Lowrey, Program Manager, Noise Management & Land Use, Transport Canada, responded to Mr. Yule in the affirmative. The NEF model was applied correctly according to accepted practice and it performed correctly, Mr Lowrey wrote. He cautioned, however, that the contour that Pryde Schropp produced was not an NEF contour but rather a planning contour.

According to Transport Canada’s website, the planning contour is produced to investigate planning alternates and must be labelled as such. It may be released to the public by a regional TC　Aviation office without Headquarters’ (Ottawa) approval. Any agency may produce these contours as they do not have any official status.

Is it 120 or 167?

It could be argued that matters would have remained where they were with 167 daily Q400 movements as the accepted limit if it weren’t for a couple of things.

One thing is the limit of 120 movements quoted in Report No. 6 of the Policy and Finance Committee, as adopted by the Council of the City of Toronto at its meeting held on June 24, 25 and 26, 2003 and repeated, as indicated above, in the Tassé Report.

Critics could easily point out that 120 and not 167 should be taken as the official number.

Another thing is CommunityAIR’s efforts to have Transport Canada prepare an official NEF study, as only a study conducted by Transport Canada is determinative, under the tripartite agreement. Transport Canada has, just last November, after almost a year’s dithering, contracted with consultant Jacques Savard to conduct the study.

The only way to determine whether the correct figure is 120 or 167 – will be that report.

However, given the supportive attitude of Transport Canada staff towards the Island Airport, one should not wholly rely on even the forthcoming Savard report unless – and until – it has been peer-reviewed.

None of the studies above consider helicopter noise in assessing noise limits.

But the tripartite agreement requires helicopter noise to be included in the NEF Contour analysis once certain conditions are met.

Helicopter movements are required to be included when:

• there are over 4,000 movements a year. The following chart lists the number of helicopter movements per year for the last five years according to StatsCan figures.

• the City of Toronto requests that Transport Canada specify flight paths for helicopters. The City made such a request – twice – in letters dated March 1, 2006, and again on May 2, 2008.
• six months has elapsed since those flight paths were specified by Transport Canada – which it is required to do after such a request is made.

To date, Transport Canada has refused to specify flight paths. It then relies on its own failure to specify flight paths to justify its refusal to include helicopter noise in the Savard study.

CommunityAIR, in a letter to Transport Canada on November 13, 2009, stated:

There has been no response on this issue from Transport Canada.

Helicopter noise is exceptionally loud and its inclusion would necessarily reduce – perhaps significantly - the airport’s noise "capacity" for turboprop aircraft.

The Christmas Eve Surprise – Up to 212 Slots!

Mid-afternoon on Christmas Eve, 2009, the TPA issued a press release that included this:

Adding 120 to 92, yields 212 slots. That volume of traffic implies that noise from the airport will be virtually constant.

The 212-slot figure is so far beyond those in any of the previous studies that it must be regarded with a high degree of skepticism.

The study that this figure is based upon has not been released.