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Montréal–Mirabel International Airport

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Template:Airport frame Template:Airport title Template:Airport image {{Airport infobox | IATA=YMX| ICAO=CYMX| type=public| run by=Aéroports de Montréal| opened=October 4]], [[1975| closest town=Montréal, Québec| elevation_ft=270| elevation_m=82| coordinates=45° 40' 47" N 74° 02' 19" W }} Template:Runway title Template:Runway Template:Runway Template:Airport end frame

Montréal-Mirabel International Airport, originally called Montréal International Airport and widely known simply as Mirabel, is a large airport located in Mirabel, Quebec, near Montréal. The airport serves mainly cargo flights, and is a manufacturing base of Bombardier Aerospace, where final assembly of CRJ700 and CRJ900 aircraft is conducted. It is part of the National Airports System.

Despite being intended to become the eastern air gateway to Canada, the airport's location and lack of transport links, as well as Montréal'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 and one of the worst examples of a failed megaproject.

History

Development

During the 1960s, the Canadian government planned new airports near its largest cities, Montréal 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 federal plan was for the new Montréal airport to be placed in the southwest part of Montréal; 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 Montréal. Quebecois Premier Robert Bourassa did not want such an important project to be placed so close to the Ontario border. Although the Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau is often blamed for the Mirabel debacle, 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/Hull area.

High speed rail transit (the system was claimed to be capable of 60-75 mph for the Montréal-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 Montréal 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. In today's terms, the single Montréal-Mirabel TRRAMM line would have cost at least a billion Canadian dollars. Thus, Mirabel was forced to cope with an inadequate road system and non-existent rail transit, supplemented only by express buses run by CTCUM.

In the process of building the airport, the federal government expropriated a colossal amount of land, about 88,000 acres (making Mirabel the world's largest airport by property areaTemplate:Fn), and 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, 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, which also never took off. 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.

Montréal International Airport opened for business on October 4, 1975, in time for the 1976 Summer Olympics. The Olympics put Montréal in the world's spotlight, and Mirabel saw special services just for the Games. For example, Qantas flew Australia's Olympic team to Mirabel. After 1976, its prestige value mostly used up, the airport began to decline in its importance.

Later years

In the 1980s, the use of longer-range jets that did not need to refuel in Montréal before crossing the Atlantic dramatically reduced the amount of air traffic into Dorval. The result was that a second airport was no longer needed. To try to ensure the airport's survival, all international flights for Montréal were banned from Dorval for many years. This created resentment among Montréalers 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 in its justification that 20 million passengers would be passing through Montréal's airports annually, 17 million through Mirabel, a claim that is now known to have been erroneous. 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. It is remarkable that the federal government never considered enacting legislation similar to the Wright Amendment that would force airlines to use Mirabel instead of Dorval.

Although Mirabel suffered from an inconvenient location due to political squabbles, a number of other problems also pervaded the project. It was the federal government's failure to close Dorval that ultimately made Mirabel redundant and a costly white elephant. An existing active Dorval made Mirabel an unattractive and expensive alternative to travellers and airlines. Closing down Dorval would have justified Mirabel's investment and usage, much like how the Hong Kong government mandated the closure of Kai Tak to make way for the larger Chek Lap Kok. In addition, Mirabel had the capacity to be expanded significantly to meeting growing demand, unlike Dorval.

The survival of Dorval also meant forgoing a hefty profit that could have been made from redeveloping the prime real-estate that is currently occupied by Dorval. Some estimate that the sale of Dorval's land to private developers would have easily covered the cost of the proposed Montréal-Mirabel TRRAMM line and Autoroute highways. Combined with Montréal'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 now used exclusively for cargo flights, with passenger operations having ceased on October 31, 2004, twenty-nine years after the airport's opening and after many years of limited, primarily charter service.

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.

Mirabel Airport is considered to be one of the best laid-out airports in the world. 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. However, the airport never handled more than half that.

Passengers walked as little as 100 meters going through the airport from the curb to the gate. There, they were whisked to their waiting jets by Passenger Transfer Vehicles (PTVs), which run from the terminal to the aircraft parking spot on the tarmac, thus saving passengers countless steps. These vehicles, similar to those at Washington Dulles International Airport, were rumored to cost one million Canadian dollars apiece (though the real figure was probably lower) and were prone to mechanical breakdowns. The PTVs also slowed down the process of moving passengers, and it could take as long as forty-five minutes to go from the terminal to the plane. In fact, Dulles airport is now in the process of gradually phasing out their use of PTVs and is planning to install a people-mover system.

Airline service

Mirabel initially opened with service from 17 airlines that included Air Canada, CP Air, Aeroflot, Air France, Swissair, KLM, El Al and British Airways. Destinations for these airlines were mostly in Europe, as well as the Caribbean and Mexico. Airlines that later served Mirabel included Varig, Air India, Aeromexico, and charter airline Air Transat. Air Transat started operations at Mirabel (its inaugural flight was from Montréal to Acapulco), and stayed until the end of passenger service in 2004. Most other airlines gradually lost faith in Mirabel, and either transferred to Dorval or pulled out of Montréal altogether. Today, the airport only services cargo flights.

Notes

Template:FnbKing 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.

See also

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. [1].
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