Edmond Eldebs is Porter Airlines’ SVP and chief commercial officer. The 17-year-plus veteran of Porter took on the mandate to oversee the regional airlines’ marketing in January 2024 with a focus on revenue generation, business growth and commercial success.

Eldebs has filled a number of roles during his time at Porter, including VP of revenue management sales and distribution, VP of revenue management and alliances and director of business development, among others.

What’s it been like having marketing duties included amongst all of your other responsibilities?

I’d say we have a strong leader in marketing, the managing director of marketing, Maclin Williams. So, I took over a team that was well run and had a strong leader. So despite not having that VP or CMO role, I’d say the team that is there was quite strong. I think if you go back to the context there, it’s important, because, if you go back in time, my boss, Kevin Jackson, president of Porter, was previously the chief commercial officer. He joined Porter as the VP of marketing, and then became our CMO, and over time, took on larger responsibilities. So, he had a very strong marketing background, and set that team up for success as I took it over. I also have him supporting me with that responsibility.

How do you handle it when the competition can do splashy 360 campaigns and you are more constrained and circumscribed?

From a brand perspective, I’d say we have a lot of strength in the marketplace. So if you look at Porter’s history, we had a larger position in the marketplace from a brand perspective, in people’s minds, than a comparable company in a similar size. We’ve been very strong from that perspective. And that continues to be the case. Our positioning in the marketplace is very well known. We are “elevating economy travel for everyone.” That has been the message we’ve had in the market since we started the growth plan and entered all of these new markets, expanding our network across America. We’ve been positioned as elevated economy travel. Free beer and wine served in glassware, snacks. That continues to be the core value proposition of Porter and what you see in the marketplace now.

As you’ve mentioned, in the last year and a half or so, the competition and the industry and environment has changed around us. Most notably, of course, Air Canada. They matched the onboard product offering across their domestic Canada and U.S. markets, and that is 100% in response to Porter’s expansion across Canada and the U.S.

And so if you go back to June of last year, Air Canada made the first announcement that they will be offering free beer and wine and free snacks on board their economy cabin for domestic-Canada and U.S. markets. Note that they didn’t do that in the Caribbean markets or any other markets where Porter doesn’t operate. And so, Air Canada has certainly been in the marketplace, spending a lot of money marketing this product offering. We’re holding steady for now. I’d say Porter continues to be differentiated from that aspect. But I think people, when they go on board a Porter flight, it’s the small things that that matter, right? It’s the it’s the fact that we serve the beer and wine in glassware.

It’s also the two-by-two seating on our aircraft. It’s free Wi-Fi that we offer. It’s the authentic and genuine service they receive from the flight attendant. I think, you look at our customer satisfaction and net promoter scores, we’ve delivered consistent customer satisfaction over 85% and net promoter scores of over 60 consistently across our network. And when you look at the comments from people, people love the interactions they have with the flight attendants. They’re very friendly. They’re genuine. It’s authentic. They love the small stuff, like the glassware we serve on board our aircraft. It’s these things that make the Porter experience so great and stand out in people’s minds, and it makes them keep coming back.

What about low-cost carrier competition?

Our model is that we treat everybody the same on board our aircraft. Our entire cabin is an economy cabin. We don’t have a different class. Porter Reserve is what we call our all inclusive economy product that includes all of the perks, from bags and seats, all the onboard stuff that’s for purchase is free, is included complimentary in that. So that’s Porter Reserve. It’s all inclusive, but it’s still the same economy seat. It’s a little bit more leg room. And then we have our Porter Classic, which is the same level of service. Not everything’s included. You have to pay for your meals, but everyone on board aircraft gets free beer and wine served in glassware.

I noticed the recent Hamilton Tiger-Cats partnership. Is this something you intend to do more of?

Porter has historically not done large sports sponsorships. This is the first large one that we’ve done. The thinking  and strategy around the Tiger-Cats partnership is around our Hamilton presence. So in June of this year, we announced that we began operating flights out of Hamilton airport. We now serve Vancouver, two flights a day through the summer. For Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax we have daily flights. This winter, we announced service to Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Nassau and [earlier this month] we announced Hamilton to Fort Lauderdale and Orlando. So we now have a significant presence out of the Hamilton airport. And the thinking around the Tiger-Cats partnership was focused around building awareness, around the Porter product and flight offering in Hamilton. You look at the Ticats’ reach in the Hamilton region, they have a very, very strong reach in that community in Hamilton and the surrounding area. It’s a great long-term partnership for us to ensure that people are aware of the Porter service offering and we’ve been very happy with that partnership.

I want to ask about expansion into the Caribbean and Mexican markets. How long term was that strategy, versus immediately trying to maybe offset decreases in load factor for U.S. routes?

The Caribbean, Mexico and these markets, in fact, have always been in our plan since the beginning. And if you actually go back to prior to us announcing these markets, if you look at the new destinations roadmap that we had on our website, you would have seen many of these markets already on it, with a future potential date on them. But what I can tell you is that the U.S. situation certainly accelerated our entry into these markets.

The U.S. environment earlier this year, changed pretty dramatically surrounding the macro environment, the tariff situation, and broadly speaking, what we see is U.S. demand is down about 15% to 20% roughly at least prior to recently.

So this year, when we looked at the situation, we have had to stay nimble. And the tariff and macro environment in the U.S. accelerated our planned entry into these markets.

So we announced in June this year our entry into Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America, Liberia. Yeah, I’d say the U.S. environment accelerated our plans, probably by about a year. We were intending to enter these markets next year. We’ve had to be nimble in this environment. We’ve had to redeploy capacity, even in domestic Canada. All of the industry has been reducing capacity in the U.S. and redeploying it across various places.

– Some responses have been edited and abbreviated.