"Quebec's Mirabel airport suffers as passenger flights transferred to Montreal"

Sunday, October 31, 2004

Quebec's Mirabel airport suffers as passenger flights transferred to
Montreal
The Canadian Press 


MONTREAL (CP) - An entire region north of Montreal is being left for dead
with the transfer of the last passenger flights from Mirabel airport,
Mirabel Mayor Hubert Meilleur said on Sunday. 

Meilleur said political indifference and short-sightedness towards the $500
million airport will hurt the entire province. 

"We're losing an international airport in Quebec," the grim-faced mayor told
all-news channel LCN from the airport on Sunday. "We're settling for being a
subsidiary of Toronto. This is very negative for the development of a
province." 

All Mirabel passenger traffic will be re-routed to Montreal's Pierre Elliott
Trudeau International Airport this week and nearly 1,300 workers will be
transferred to the site in suburban Dorval. Another 160 people will lose
their jobs. 

An Air Transat jet to Paris on Sunday evening is the last scheduled run to
appear on Mirabel's flight schedule. Cargo carriers will be the airport's
only remaining tenants. 

The sprawling complex 40 kilometres north of Montreal faces an uncertain
fate after being billed the airport of the future when it was opened amid
great fanfare in 1975. 

Officials at the time predicted 60 million passengers would pass through the
glass, steel and concrete structure annually by 2010, but yearly passenger
traffic never surpassed three million. 

Meanwhile, roads to Mirabel were left underdeveloped, a proposed rail link
never got off the ground and thousands of displaced residents bemoaned
federal expropriation of their land. 

The government expropriated more than 324 square kilometres of prime
farmland but only used 16 square kilometres for the airport. A total of
10,000 people had been forced from their homes. 

The government unloaded most of the expropriated land in the 1980s, with
some residents opting to buy back land they previously owned. 

Mirabel workers said the federal government never gave the airport a chance
to flourish. 

"We've drawn conclusions, but the conclusion is always that there's politics
behind it," Harold Keegan, vice-president of the airport workers' union,
said recently. 

"It's not rational, but then in politics not everything is rational." 

Catherine Laulier, who worked at Mirabel for 19 years, said she faces a
lengthy commute now that her job has been transferred to Montreal. 

"Transportation for me will be very difficult," she told reporters at the
airport. 

"I live in the Laurentians so we could be talking about a two-hour commute."


The Montreal airport authority is trying to find new uses for Mirabel
airport and has received a number of proposals for redevelopment. 

Media reports have suggested the airport could be transformed into a private
hospital, an exhibition centre or a movie studio. 

Federal Transport Minister Jean Lapierre has been tight-lipped about the
airport's fate. 

While Mirabel suffers, a $356-million overhaul at Trudeau airport is nearly
complete. A new international arrivals complex, with 10 new Canada Customs
counters and double the baggage-handling capacity, is to open Nov. 18. 

An adjacent international jetty to accommodate wide-body aircraft is to open
in June. Other airport improvements in the works include expanded check-in
space at the domestic departure area and more self-service kiosks. 

But Meilleur predicted Montreal residents will demand a reduction in air
traffic over their homes just as they did in the late 1960s prior to the
opening of Mirabel airport. 

"We must . . . be ready for flights to return once citizens of Montreal,
with 800 flights over their heads, become completely fed up with the
situation," said Meilleur. 

"So (Mirabel) airport will be preserved because I'm telling you that the
citizens of (Montreal) cannot maintain a quality of life."


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