Good thing no one is asking for city funds for the airport expansion then.
Well, true, Porter is footing the bill, and we usually think that businesses that pay for their own experiments, no matter how risky, have a right to do so.
But this isn't your run of the mill business venture that carries no risk except to the investor/business owner.
The construction of a concrete runway is a very costly, durable fixed asset that can't be moved, sold or modified. Laws, future business ventures and political influence will almost certainly bend toward it, and not the other way around.
I always thought that Porter's business plan to build a runway at its own expense to fly unproven jets to medium-range destinations that fierce stiff competition was shaky. However, there are two other possibilities which make more sense to me.
The first possibility is that Porter is buying these jets and building this runway not to fly to LA and Vancouver, but to allow the same plane to make multiple flights to Newark or Montreal without refueling and with quicker turnaround times. This, of course, means that there will be a considerable rise in the amount of flights and air traffic above Toronto Harbour.
The second possibility is that Deluce is priming Porter for a sale. This would make sense to me, since he's done it before, and because YTZ's competitiveness only applies to airlines that own turboprops. By expanding the runway, he can invite bids from all the airlines that own existing regional jets. So, in this case, we will see the invitation of jets that break existing noise rules...except that, when that time comes, the laws will bend toward accommodating these jets. After all, the runway is a huge sunk cost for TPA. Are they going to attach strings to the profitable use of an asset that they are liable for?
In both scenarios, we lose, although we lose a lot more in the second scenario. In the first, we get a dramatic expansion of air traffic above Toronto harbour. In the second scenario, we lose everything: the guarantee that there will be no discernible noise impacts, expansion of air traffic, and the customer experience of Porter, itself.
Even if this runway is built by Porter for Porter, the runway will almost certainly have a longer lifespan than Porter, the company, itself. This is just a fact of an enormous sunk cost like infrastructure. There will be a day when somebody else decides how they want to use the runway, and given the enormous cost and liability of the runway, they will make sure that they operate it on their terms, rather than the terms previously set out by lawmakers.
