Business travel is suffering, MUN prof says Porter's St. John's pullout part of tougher times

A bleakoil and gas economy is cutting into winter air travel to and from Newfoundland and Labrador, says a Memorial University business professor.

"This is just Porterreacting to their model, to their demand, and saying, 'look we're not getting the business that we want between January and April, let's reduce it or shut it down,'" said Tom Cooper on Tuesday.

• Porter pulls out of expanding St. John's airport for winter

Cooper said the airline's decision to move to seasonal service at St. John's International Airport, cancelling flights between Jan. 4 and April11 - a traditionally slow time for travel -can be looked at two ways.

"The first waywould be to say, 'this is nothing new', Air Canada and WestJet have been here for a long time, they're not letting their flights go."

Along that same vein, Cooper said the airline's decision to continue servicing the capital city from April to December shows how the tourism season is doing really well, and there's more demand over the summer.

Business travel is suffering

On the negative side, Cooper said Porter's decision indicates the economy is not that great, people have less disposable income, businesses have less revenue, and are therefore taking less flights.

"So [Porter] is just looking at it and saying, 'the economy's not doing that well, let's get out of the market during winter."

Cooper said it takes a lot of time to attracttourists year-round, particularly business travellers, evidenced in the success of years of the provincial government's summer tourism campaigns.

"Business travellers come when there's business, and when there's demand. Having conventions here in the middle of February? That can be difficult with the weather, etc," said Cooper.

"But ultimately it's a question of marketing, a question of saying, 'hey,there's lots of interesting things happening here during the winter,' and making sure that there is a demand for people to come in."

So will passengers be paying more with one competitor out of the market for a few months?

"I still think the prices will probably be reasonable" considering market share,said Cooper.

"Air Canada and WestJet are kind of two big beasts and Porter's a little bit smaller."