Seeing a market niche where the train takes 90 minutes and driving takes over 60, Greater Toronto Airways is running a 12-minute flight to Niagara Falls from Toronto’s downtown Billy Bishop Airport…but it’s a bit pricey!
The flights start September 15, with tickets at the equivalent of $65 ($85 CAD) each way, more than double the rail fare. But if you’re impatient, just bring ID (passport for non-Canadians) and get on the twice-a-day 8 passenger flight on a Piper Navajo Chieftain (above).
While it’s offered to sightseers, the schedule has a flight leaving Niagara at 8:30 am and returning at 4:30 that may appeal to commuters as well. GTA has mostly been a charter operation so far, but has plans to link other towns in the Toronto area where heavy traffic gives them a possible niche. It also has its eye on Montreal.
It’s not the world’s shortest scheduled commercial flight, by the way; that honor goes to Loganair’s flight between Westray and Papa Westray in Scotland’s Orkney islands. The 3.2km flight can take as little as 47 seconds in the air. Second place goes to Cayman Airways for its 10-minute, 24.7 km flight between Cayman Brac and Little Cayman islands.
It would be an extremely dramatic flight. Views of Toronto at one end, the vaste Lake Ontario, and the Niagara peninsula at the other.