Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport

Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport (IATA: YTZ, ICAO: CYTZ), commonly known as the Toronto Island Airport, is a small airport located on the Toronto Islands in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is named after Air Marshal Billy Bishop, a Canadian World War I flying ace. The airport is used by civil aviation, air ambulances, and regional airlines using turboprop planes. It is reached by taking a passenger ferry from a dock in central Toronto. As of 2011, it was ranked Canada's 9th-busiest airport and Ontario's third-busiest airport by passengers and the 14th-busiest Canadian airport in terms of aircraft movements. The airport was previously known as Toronto City Centre Airport and Port George VI Island Airport.

Originally conceived in the 1930s as the main airport for Toronto, the airport has long been a source for political debate as to the proper use of its waterfront site in central Toronto. Building the airport necessitated the closure of park lands, a hotel, cottages, and an amusement park on the Toronto Island site. Construction of the airport in the late 1930s was stopped and started and its final construction only went ahead after the death of the Toronto mayor who had opposed its construction. At the same time, Toronto built Malton Airport as a secondary air field, but it was Malton which became Toronto's main airport, now called Toronto Pearson International Airport. The island airport became used mainly for general civil aviation and lost money on its operations. During the 1940s and 1950s, several political leaders proposed the expansion of the airport as a way to enable scheduled passenger airlines and reduce the airport deficits. An expansion of runways and facilities was completed in 1962, financed by the sale of Malton Airport to the Government of Canada. Despite the improvements, the island airport did not become a passenger airline hub, and its existence came into question, starting in the 1960s. In 1968, the site was proposed for a large housing development known as 'Harbor City.' In the 1970s, as part of a debate around airports serving Toronto, the airport became the focus of efforts to set up a network of airports in Canada serving Short-Take-Off-And-Landing (STOL) regional airlines. From a peak of over 200,000 annual flights in the 1960s, the island airport went into decline even as several regional airlines operated at the airport from the 1970s onwards. The annual operating deficit forced its operator, the Toronto Harbour Commission (THC) to sell land to pay the ongoing deficit and by the 1990s, the airport was again facing questions about its continued existence. By then, only Air Canada operated scheduled flights from the airport, operating a single route to Ottawa.

In 2000, the Government of Canada re-organized the operation of port operations in Canada, including the formation of the Toronto Port Authority (TPA) to replace the Harbour Commission as the operator of Toronto Harbour and the island airport, with a focus on self-sufficiency and operate in a business-like manner. The new agency's plans to expand usage at the airport to erase its deficit, awoke a long-simmering disagreement between community groups and Toronto politicians wishing to close the airport and the business community which supported the expansion of its usage. The TPA welcomed a proposed new regional airline, Porter Airlines, in exchange for airport improvements and a bridge to the airport to eliminate the short ferry ride. The bridge became a mayoral election issue in 2003 and the City of Toronto forced its cancellation. Using federal funds, the TPA bought new passenger ferries and built new facilities for passengers and Porter began flying from the airport in 2006. Increases in flights and a new passenger user fee imposed by the TPA led to the airport becoming self-sufficient by 2010. That year Porter began building a new passenger terminal. In 2011, Air Canada, which had been forced out by Porter, returned to the airport. In 2012, the TPA began a project to link the airport to the mainland with a pedestrian tunnel, funded by the passenger user fee, which is intended to facilitate a further increase in flights.