Explain then why is Sydney international in 2016 hit nearly 42 million pax and YYZ 44 million ? GTA has 1.4 million more than Sydney ...yet they are very close in pax traffic for both airports.....Sydney city proper has like 300,000 people ...yet Toronto has 2.6 million ...again....population has nothing to do with it ! I think what happened at yul was that lack
Of investment at ADM...with the Mirabel issue ...and other factors of
Course

Population has something to do with it, but I agree that it's not the single biggest factor at all. Hubbing strategy has a lot more to do with it than almost anything else. Both Frankfurt and Amsterdam are significantly smaller than either Toronto or Sydney and look at the size of their airports.

You're right that YUL suffered from years - decades - of Montreal's relative decline to not only Toronto, but the rest of the country.

Yet another 2-3 pages talking about Montreal lagging behind Toronto and the rest of Canada in something. We've never been there before!

So fewer Montrealers may or may not travel to other places and fewer vacationers may or may not visit Montreal. The numbers don't really tell you. Why does it really matter that much anyways? Consider Atlanta and Dubai are the envy of this discussion.

Some people get off on number superiority? :???:

I could see if there's some barrier to travel (i.e. Australian airline deregulation mentioned previously) that is hindering natural growth of travel and why a comparison might be a useful start point to analyze where improvements could be made.

Now, personally, I'm a big fan of smaller airports/quieter travel. It's why I try to fly out of smaller airports and on off days (I particularly like Wednesdays). So, avoiding a zoo of an airport like Atlanta is worth a premium to me.

This will surely give YYC a nice boost in passengers.

Toronto also has YTZ, which handles around 2.7M I think...... (was 2.7M last year and growing)

YYZ is growing rapidly, will likely reach 47-48M this year

Combined, it is easily 50M+ for the 2 Toronto airports this year

Great news about that Calgary to Belise flight. Were thinking about going there this winter, this may have sealed the deal

Lets just compare Montreal with similar sized cities from around the world and see if it punches below or above its weight in passengers both international and domestic.

2 random examples :

Izmir, in Turkey, has roughly the same population as Montreal : 4.2M
Izmir's airport had 12M passengers in 2016

Hamburg, Germany, is a bit bigger than Montreal, but is in a similar situation as Montreal. Many potential destinations can be reached by car / train, bigger cities nearby which suck a part of the traffic. And its passenger count is very similar to Montreal's : 16.1M passengers in 2016

I'll use 2016 numbers for comparison, on the 2 cities that were previously mentioned:

Montreal: 16.6m (6.4m domestic, 10.2m international)
Melbourne: 33.7m (24.4m domestic, 9.3m international)

It would seem that what largely has been discussed previously holds - a large proportion of Melbourne's passenger advantage over Montreal is Australian domestic passengers. In fact, the MEL-SYD route accounts for 8.6m passengers per year.

Some theories have been floated why the two cities airports have such different domestic passenger numbers. I suspect it is a combination of several factors:
1. Montreal is a far more accessible by road from other major cities (both Canadian and US).
2. It is more likely that Montrealers and Quebecers have family within province than outside of it.
3. Those from Quebec have a tendency to travel to destinations that are warmer in the winter (like most Canadians) or places that they share a common language with (France/Belgium) during the summer.

I'm not really seeing any huge external barriers to travel that discriminates against Montreal. Mostly, I think it's a case of geographical location and culture that accounts for the different travel patters.

I reiterate my comment from before though: Who cares about passenger numbers aside from basically what that volume helps support? All I care about at an airport (aside from the amenities that I use when I'm there) is how conveniently it connects me to where I want to go. Whether said airport has more passenger volume than another airport in a city a similar size halfway across the world is irrelevant to me.

It's a nice addition, but I'm surprised - I wouldn't have thought the numbers would be there. Maybe, if you build it, they do come!

[del]

^ yeah likely, like those flight & hotel deals they have for a lot of carribean countries

It's not all good news from WS, unfortunately. Those planes had to come from somewhere.

YUL-FLL
MCO-YUL/YVR/YHZ/YOW/YWG
YOW-RSW/TPA
LAS-YWG

All of these routes get pretty much cut in half in terms of frequency.

Interesting that Westjet made such a big point of emphasizing the 3 hubs in today's release. In the old days they didn't even talk much about hubbing. Growing up I see :)

WestJet also announced the addition of dozens of new flights across Canada. The additional flights deliver optimized service for both the business and leisure traveller and give Canadians greater connectivity into and out of WestJet hubs in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto, providing more flight frequency between key routes, more convenient schedules and greater access from smaller airports into the wider WestJet network.

"Bolstering our hub cities – the core of the WestJet network – is typical of the kind of difference we want to make for Canadian travellers," said Brian Znotins. "The addition of more than 125 flights into and out of Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto creates one-stop connections, faster travel times and better scheduling to address the demand Canadians have for travel that is convenient, stress-free and low cost."

http://westjet2.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1250

London, England city proper is about 7-8,000 people - they must be a superstar then, eh?

Lol.

As you pointed out, city population isn't what matters, it's the metro population that does.

Like many said, PAX numbers don't always reveal much about a city. Or else, Atlanta would be the most cosmopolitan city in the world.

What matters are the international numbers, because that's what tells you how connected you are to the world economy and the rest of the world in general. An airport that has 15 domestic flights is much less convenient than the airport that has 5 domestic and 5 international flights.

So yes, YUL does lag behind a little, but I bet (don't have the numbers) it's top 15 in the continent for international passengers while being the 19th largest metro. And that's what counts, really.

YUL I believe in 2016 was 11th busiest Airport in North America in terms of International passengers (including transborder of course)