Hi Mr. Iler,

Here's an interesting article about Porter posted on the Treehugger.com website. "PERHAPS FLYING TURBOPROP ISN'T DYING."
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/12/perhaps_flying_1.php

Here is an excerpt from the article that actually indicates that the Porter Dash 8s are indeed more efficient and less harmful to the environment than "jet" airliners.

--When you look at the statistics for "energy intensity of passenger travel modes" and compare BTU's per passenger mile traveled, remarkable numbers pop up. George Monbiot makes a big case for the return of bus lines, and makes a valid point- they are efficient. US department of transportation, from worst to first:

Car other than normal passenger car (SUVs) 4509 btu per passenger-mile
Transit Motor bus 4147
international flights 4126
domestic flights 4049
passenger car 3589
PORTER DASH 8-400 - 2591 (I added this)
motorcycle 2273
amtrak (high speed modern train) 2134
Intercity bus 1286 (correction from earlier version of this post)

Monbiot will also point out that even if different modes use the same amount of fuel, flying is far worse because it exhausts CO2 and water vapour into the stratosphere where it is far more effective as an agent for global warming.

**Then let's look at the Porter Air model. It is a short hop to the airport; I can take the bus or bicycle there because it is downtown. They fly new Bombardier Q400 turboprops, which use 64% of the fuel per passenger mile that jets do. Apply that to the BTU's for domestic flights and we are at 2591 BTU's per passenger mile, less than a car and just slightly above a modern train. (efficiency is slightly less on longer flights)

And being turboprops, their ceiling is half of that of a jet- they do not fly in the stratosphere. "-- end of excerpt

Certainly a cutting edge environmental website should carry some weight with the CAIR hierarchy and those opposed to the airport on purely environmental grounds.

I think our disagreement on the issue of Dash 8-400 efficiency is simply a result of semantics. Define - Porter's competition. Is it the competing aircraft that used to use the SAME airport to the same destinations, or is it the other airlines that fly vastly different aircraft to the same destinations? Regardless of which "competition" we use as a guideline, the fact is that the Dash 8-400 is a modern & efficient aircraft. Factor in the reduced carbon footprint of customers who use the BBTCA due to it's proximity and the advantages are even more definitive.

Take Care!
Joe