Montréal-Mirabel International Airport

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{| class="infobox bordered" style="width: 220px; font-size: 95%;" |- ! colspan="4" style="text-align: center; background-color: #4682B4; color: white;" |Montréal-Mirabel International Airport |- |align="center" colspan="4"|

Montréal-Mirabel International Airport, (or Montréal International (Mirabel) Airport) originally called Montreal International Airport and widely known simply as Mirabel, is a large airport located in Mirabel, Quebec, near Montreal and was opened 4 October 1975. The airport serves mainly cargo flights, and is a manufacturing base of Bombardier Aerospace, where final assembly of regional jets (CRJ700 and CRJ900) aircraft is conducted. It is part of the National Airports System. It is the second largest airport in the world in terms of area, covering more land area than the five New York City boroughs.

Despite being intended to become the eastern air gateway to Canada, the airport's location and lack of transport links, as well as Montreal's economic decline relative to Toronto, made it unpopular with airlines. Eventually it was relegated to the simple role of a cargo airport. The airport, initially a source of pride, eventually became an embarrassment widely regarded in Canada as being a boondoggle, or a "white elephant," and one of the best examples of a failed megaproject.

Contents

1 History

1.1 Development
1.2 Later years

2 Architecture and layout
3 Airline service
4 Notes
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

History

Montréal Mirabel International Airport Diagram

Development

During the 1960s, the Canadian government planned new airports near its largest cities, Montreal and Toronto. This was to relieve pressure on Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (then known as Dorval Airport) and Toronto Pearson International Airport (then known as Toronto International), and to move air traffic away from areas that had become heavily built up.

The original plan was for the new Montreal airport to be placed in the southwest part of Montreal; this was well connected by existing road and rail routes, as well as being close enough to serve the population of the city. The airport was also intended to serve as the gateway to Ottawa as well as Montreal. Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa did not want such an important project to be placed so close to the Ontario border. Although Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau is often blamed for Mirabel's failure, many historians now argue that federal-provincial squabbles and Quebec nationalism were the true culprits.

The federal-provincial compromise moved the airport much further north to its existing location, where it is served only with a long road link via Autoroutes 15 and 50. An additional link via Autoroute 13 was planned but never completed. Also planned but not finished was the connection of Autoroute 50 to the Ottawa/Gatineau area.

High speed rail transit (the system was to be capable of speeds from 60 to 75 mph (100 to 120 km/h) for the Montreal-Mirabel run), initially to be called TRRAMM (Transport Rapide Régional Aéroportuaire Montréal-Mirabel), was intended to be completed at a later date. However, it never got beyond the drawing board. The TRRAMM system was also intended to eventually be expanded to other parts of the Montreal region. The major stumbling block for the TRRAMM project was funding. The federal, provincal, and municipal governments never managed to find enough cash to fund the highly ambitious and expensive rapid transit project. Thus, Mirabel was forced to cope with an inadequate road system and non-existent rail transit, supplemented only by express buses run by STCUM.

In the process of building the airport, the federal government expropriated a colossal amount of land, about 88,000 acres (356 km²), making Mirabel the world's largest airport by property area.¹ It attracted the ire of local residents who were forced to move. The airport's operations zone, which encompassed what was eventually built plus expansion room, amounted to only 17,000 acres (69 km²), or about 19% of the total area of the airport. The federal government planned to use the excess land as a noise buffer and as an industrial development zone that was never started. The people of St. Scholastique, a town upon which the airport sits, protested vehemently against the expropriation of their land. Nevertheless, construction started in June 1970 under the auspices of BANAIM, a government organization formed to build the airport.

Montreal International Airport opened for business on October 4, 1975, in time for the 1976 Summer Olympics. The Olympics put Montreal in the world's spotlight, and Mirabel saw special services for the Games. For example, Qantas flew Australia's Olympic team to Mirabel.

Later years

After 1976, the airport began to decline in importance due to the increasing use in the 1980s of longer-range jets that did not need to refuel in Montreal before crossing the Atlantic. This dramatically reduced the amount of air traffic into Dorval. The result was that a second airport was no longer needed. To ensure the airport's survival, all international flights for Montreal were banned from Dorval for many years. This created resentment among Montrealers who were forced to travel far out of town for their flights, and to take long bus rides for connections from domestic to international flights.

The government predicted that Dorval would be completely saturated by 1985 as part of its justification for building Mirabel. The federal government further claimed that 20 million passengers would be passing through Montreal's airports annually, with 17 million through Mirabel. That claim never materialized, for by 1991 Mirabel and Dorval handled a total of 8 million passengers and 112,000 tons of cargo annually, while Toronto was handling 18.5 million passengers and 312,000 tons of cargo. Mirabel alone never managed to exceed 3 million passengers per year in its existence as a passenger airport. No legislation similar to the Wright Amendment was enacted that would force airlines to use Mirabel instead of Dorval. Mirabel had the capacity to be expanded significantly to meeting growing demand, unlike Dorval. Nevertheless, an existing active Dorval made Mirabel an unattractive and expensive alternative to travellers and airlines. The continuing existence of Dorval also meant forgoing a profit that could have been made from redeveloping the prime real-estate that is currently occupied by the airport. Combined with Montreal's decline in comparison with Toronto and the failure of passenger numbers to grow at the rates expected, Mirabel became a pariah airport in Canada, with only Air Transat holding out until the very end.

Today, Montréal-Mirabel International Airport is used exclusively for cargo flights, with passenger operations having ceased on October 31, 2004, twenty-nine years after the airport's opening and many years of limited, primarily charter service. Bombardier Aerospace and Bell Helicopter launch newly constructed units from their factories at Mirabel.

In 2006, I-Parks Creative Industries, a French firm that specializes in the creation of urban tourist attractions, and Oger International SA, the global engineering company owned by the family of slain former Lebanese prime minister and entrepreneur Rafik Hariri, entered into an agreement to turn Mirabel into a theme park. The proposed concept of the park is based on the theme of water and outer space.³ ⁴

Architecture and layout

Mirabel was designed to be eventually expanded to six runways as well as six terminal buildings. The expansion was supposed to occur in a number of phases and be completed by 2025. However, the airport never got beyond the first phase of construction, and by October 2005 runway 11/29 was closed leaving only runway 06/24 operational.⁵

From the furthest reach of the parking lot to the airplane seat, one can walk as little as 200 meters. A train station was also built in the basement for the planned TRRAMM service, right below the main passenger concourse. Today, it is used as an employee parking lot.

Designed by architects Papineau-Gérin-Lajoie, Mirabel's terminal carried over their creator's award-winning Expo 67 Québec pavilion design. A simple minimalist dark glass box sitting on top of a concrete bunker housing maintenance services, the terminal was hailed as an architectural triumph when it first opened. The first and only terminal was designed to handle six million passengers per year.

Passengers walked as little as 100 meters going from the curb to the gate. Once there, passengers would be transported to their aircraft by Passenger Transfer Vehicles (PTVs), rather than walking through jetways. The PTVs, similar to those at Washington Dulles International Airport, ran from the terminal to the aircraft parking spot on the tarmac. It was reported by Radio-Canada/CBC that each of these vehicles had cost up to 400,000 Canadian Dollars at the time.² To eventually make connections between flights easier, the terminal also included a few jetways, in a smaller concourse called the Aeroquay, accessible via an underground tunnel and later connected directly to the main concourse.

Airline service

Mirabel initially opened with service from local airlines Air Canada, CP Air and Quebecair, as well as airlines from more than fifteen countries, including Aer Lingus, Aeroflot, Air France, Alitalia, British Airways, CSA, El Al, Iberia, KLM, Lufthansa, Olympic Airways, Sabena, SAS, Swissair and TAP. These airlines had their national country flags posted in front of the terminal on the inauguration of Mirabel.

Other airlines to have flown to Mirabel at some point were Aerolineas Argentinas, AeroMexico, Air India, Cubana de Aviación, Finnair, Jaro International, JAT, LOT, Royal Air Maroc, Tarom, and Varig. Most gradually lost faith in Mirabel and either transferred to Dorval in 1997 or pulled out of Montreal altogether.

Several charter airlines also served Mirabel, such as Wardair, Nationair, Canada 3000 and Royal Aviation. All four have either merged or gone out of business. Air Transat is the only charter airline that started operations at Mirabel and stayed until the end of passenger service in 2004.

Today, the only transport users of Mirabel are cargo airlines, which include:

All Canada Express
CargoJet Airlines
FedEx
Kelowna Flightcraft
Tarom Cargo (Bucharest)
UPS

Notes

Note 1: King Fahd International Airport in Saudi Arabia later surpassed Mirabel as the world's largest airport by property area. The Saudi airport still retains this record.

Note 2: [Mirabel looks for new role–again (28 April 2004)]. CBC News. Accessed September 22, 2005.

Note 3: [Airport to be turned into amusement park (21 February 2006)]. CTV News. Accessed March 25, 2006.

Note 4: Delean, Paul (22 February 2006). [Mirabel may take off as theme park]. The Montreal Gazette.

Note 5: Although the Canada Flight Supplement published by NAV CANADA shows only runway 06/24 in use the [Aéroports de Montréal site] still shows 11/29 as operational.

References

Financial Times of Canada. (1975). Mirabel. Special ed. Don Mills, ON: Financial Times of Canada.
Durivage, Simon."Mirabel, airport of the year 2000." Montreal, Montreal. 8 Sep 1992. [Video Archive].
Sergio Ortega (December 1999). [Mirabel: The Airport where the Future is Past]. AirOdyssey.net.
Canada Flight Supplement. Effective 0901Z 8 June 2006 to 0901Z 3 August 2006.

External links

[Aéroports de Montréal]
[Satellite photo on Google Maps]
[Page about Mirabel Airport in the Canadian Owners & Pilots Association Places to Fly Airport Directory]
[The airport whose demise was caused by rail absence] a critique of the Mirabel Airport

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Montreal landmarks
Buildings	Biodome \| Biosphère \| Centre Bell \| Canadian Centre for Architecture \| Montreal Casino \| Complexe Desjardins \| Montreal Forum \| Grande Bibliothèque du Québec \| Habitat '67 \| Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral \| McCord Museum \| Montreal Science Centre \| Notre-Dame de Montréal Basilica \| Olympic Stadium \| Palais des congrès de Montréal \| Place des Arts \| Place Ville-Marie \| Redpath Museum \| Saint Joseph's Oratory \| Tour de la Bourse \| Underground City \| World Trade Centre Montreal
Neighbourhoods	Chinatown \| Old Montreal \| Old Port \| Quartier international de Montréal
Nature and Parks	Jardin botanique de Montréal \| Mount Royal
Islands	Île Bizard \| Island of Montreal \| Île Notre-Dame \| Nuns' Island \| Saint Helen's Island
Transportation	Montréal-Mirabel International Airport \| Montreal Metro \| Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport \| Windsor Station \| Central Station

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