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Following on from the interline agreement they signed towards the very end of 2024, British Airways and Porter Airlines have now signed a codeshare agreement covering multiple destinations across Canada, and these codeshares are now bookable on the British Airways website for travel from next month.
The details
The new codeshare agreement covers 17 Canadian destinations served by Porter Airlines, including Ottawa, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Victoria, and St. John’s. Connections work via Toronto or Montreal from British Airways’ existing London network, and customers can now book their whole trip across both airlines through a single BA-coded booking.
Importantly for some, British Airways Club members will now earn Avios and Tier Points on the Porter Airlines sectors of their bookings as well as on the British Airways sectors (the interline agreement didn’t allow for this), just as they already can on most other British Airways codeshares.
The codeshare destinations
Calgary
Charlottetown
Deer Lake
Edmonton
Halifax
Kelowna
Montreal (Metropolitan)
Montreal (Trudeau)
Ottawa
Quebec City
Saskatoon
St John’s
Thunder Bay
Toronto (Pearson)
Vancouver
Winnipeg
Victoria
About Porter
Porter Airlines is a Toronto-based carrier flying to more than 40 destinations across North America, Central America, and the Caribbean.
It operates Bombardier Q400 and Embraer 195 aircraft which both offer cabins with a 2-2 layout and no Business Class.
In lieu of Business Class, however, the front 5 rows of the Embraer 195 offer flyers a capacious 36″ of pitch (legroom), rows 5 through 7 as well as rows 13 & 14 offer 34″, while the remaining rows get just 30″. All seats on the Embraer are a little over 18″wide.
Things are a lot tighter on the Q400 where all 78 seats are just 17″ wide and offer just 30″ of pitch.
BA tells us the Porter is known for its “Elevated Economy” product which, apparently, includes complimentary drinks served in real glassware, premium snacks, and free Wi-Fi, and that’s a lot more the you can expect on most BA short-haul flights.
Quick thoughts
The first thing to note is that this will be seen as good news by anyone who travels between Canada and the UK with any kind of frequency as it adds more booking options and it opens up the ability to earn Tier Points and Avios on select connecting flights.
Interestingly, there’s no mention of Avios redemptions in the press release and at the time of writing, we can see the codeshare flights bookable for cash on BA.com but none of these itineraries appear to be bookable with Avios.
Either BA is simply taking a bit longer to load in Reward Flight inventory for these new codeshares, or Avios redemptions will not be available on itineraries including Porter Airlines we can’t tell right now, and we may have to wait a few days before we find out.
Overall, this is a nice step forward for British Airways flyers as there don’t appear to be any negatives here (as far as we know the BA/WestJet partnership remains intact) and for a regional carrier, Porter appears to be well regarded. Add to that the fact that the OneWorld alliance has no foothold within Canada and this looks like even better news.
Bottom line
British Airways and Porter Airlines have turned their interline agreement into a codeshare agreement covering 17 Canadian destinations. The codeshares are bookable for travel from 8 July, with Avios and Tier Point earning included on the Porter Airlines legs.
Featured image courtesy of British Airways
