Template:Airport frame Template:Airport title Template:Airport image Template:Airport infobox Template:Runway title Template:Runway Template:Runway
Template:Airport end frame Montréal-Mirabel International Airport, (or Montréal International (Mirabel) Airport) (IATA: YMX, ICAO: CYMX) 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 now serves only cargo flights, and is a manufacturing base of Bombardier Aerospace, where final assembly of regional jets (CRJ700 and CRJ900) aircraft is conducted. 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 and a white elephant.
The 1960's saw Montreal experience a tremendous economic boom. Massive construction projects, including the Montreal Metro coupled with the hosting of Expo 67 brought the city international status. More and more visitors were arriving to the city, especially by airplane, though not always by choice. The federal government required that European airlines make Montreal their only Canadian destination. This resulted in 15-20% annual growth in passenger traffic at the city's Dorval airport. Optimistic about the city's future and its continuing ability to attract more and more visitors, government officials decided to build a new airport that would be more than able to absorb increased passenger traffic well into the 21st century.
The Canadian Ministry of Transport studied five possible sites for Montreal's new airport: St-Jean sur Richelieu (50km to the southeast), Vaudreuil (40km to the west ), Joliette (70km to the north), St-Amable (30km to the northeast), and St. Scholastique (60km to the northwest). In March 1969, the St. Scholastique site was chosen, and proposals were drawn up to expropriate 97,000 acres (392 km²), an area larger than the entire island of Montreal.
The Quebec government preferred that the new airport be situated in Drummondville (100km to the east), while the federal government imagined that it should be located west of the island. A federal-provincial compromise moved the airport north to its existing location, where it is served only by a long road link via Autoroutes 15 and Autoroute 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, provincial, 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 Montreal Transit Corporation.
The federal government expropriation resulted in making Mirabel the world's largest airport by property area.Template:Fn 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 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. In the rush to get the airport open in time for the Olympics, it was decided to transfer flights to Mirabel in two stages. International flights would be transferred immediately, while domestic and transborder flights would continue to be served by Dorval airport until 1982.
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 launches newly constructed units from its factory at Mirabel.
With very little or, later, no airline service, and with many empty spaces inside its terminal, Mirabel has been the setting of several movies, TV series and commercials for many years. The movie The Terminal features the mezzanine overlooking the immigration desks and the baggage carrousels directly behind them, the tarmac and the main terminal entrance (with a digitally added New York skyline reflection). All other terminal scenes were shot elsewhere.
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.Template:Fn Template:Fn
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.Template:Fn
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.Template:Fn 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.
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, People Express, 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: