The Travel Entrepreneur of the Year Robert Deluce's Porter Airlines put a secondary airport back on the map and brought civility back to flying.
By Bruce Schoenfeld •
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Robert Deluce's vision of what air travel should be today looks a lot like 1990. Everybody gets to check a bag free of charge. Coffee, tea and cookies are served in an open-to-all departure lounge, and beer, wine and snacks are complimentary on the plane. There's plenty of legroom--all the way to the back row--and an in-flight magazine so interesting you'd buy it off the newsstand. And when you land, you're hustled off to the heart of downtown by a free shuttle.
With the addition of modern innovations such as free Wi-Fi in the lounge and a high-end travel boutique selling $31 Australian hand balm and $800 Leica cameras, that's what Deluce has put into place as president and CEO of Porter Airlines, which he co-founded in 2006. "We're a customer-service organization," Deluce says, "that happens to operate aircraft."
