YUL will run into capacity problems eventually though... And there isn't that much room to expand.

Bring back Mirabel? They could also do a lot of expropriation...

For the runways, at 60M PAX, and there's room to add a couple runways. Terminal capacity is meant for 20M PAX and ADM will be building a second one in the next 5 years or so. Cargo mostly being at Mirabel is an excellent thing.

YUL is better positioned than YYZ as a Eastern Canada/US hub as it's closer to Europe and Asia and also closer to many cities. Hence Air Canada's recent new routes.

The problem is that they probably won't be making much for those TPAC routes right now. Economy fare during off-season is only about $600-$800 round-trip, and can go down to as low as $350 during promotion. It's pretty much a suicide to open a route that does not have nearly enough demand to fill the plane...

What is theoretically the maximum capacity that that lot of land can accommodate?

Probably around 30-35M.

So apparantly the land area of the airport is 1320 hectares. This is about the same as LAX which serves 80 million passengers, so I think we are ok for the foreseeable future. LAX, however, has the fourth highest PAX to area ratio, so it is very efficient at managing that space; the most efficient being Heathrow. With the efficiency of Heathrow, YUL could probably accommodate 100M passengers per year.

YYZ already is the substantial Asia to South America transit hub. That was established years ago. AC is reluctant to expand to secondary Chinese cities because the market isn’t there (right now anyway). UA’s attempt at starting secondary cities has stalled and failed. That should be indication enough.
YVR and YYZ already connected to the 6 largest East Asian markets. PVG, PEK, HKG, ICN, NRT/HND and TPE. Probably not many other opportunities in East Asia from Canada.

When I think of construction projects in Quebec, the last word I think of is "efficiency".

You're dreaming if you think YUL can handle 100 M passengers. First of all LAX has 4 runways, YUL only uses 2 at a time (used to be 3 a while ago, so you see, we are not headed in the right direction)

LHR and LAX are ideal designs. i.e several terminal buildings in between the set of parallel runways. That is not the case at YUL, which has a tiny terminal building by comparison, stuck at the far end of the airport, to which road access is a joke.

There's room to add runways at YUL? Where exactly? If a new terminal is built, we will lose a runway (runway 10/28), not add one.

We're struggling to find room to add a proper dual parallel taxiway, much less a runway.

Kind of exaggerating there. YUL doesn't really have an advantage over YYZ in any of those areas. Maybe to the Maritimes, but that's about it. AC added routes at YUL because they see potential in the Montreal market. The Quebec economy is among the best in the country in terms of growth right now, unemployment rate is the lowest it's been in decades , and among the best in the country. People are spending money, travelling, foreign investment is on the rise. Tourism is up. These are the reasons why AC has added flights. Not because of YUL's assumed location advantage over YYZ.

Not according to stats Canada Labour force December statistics. Unemployment in BC was the lowest in the country at 4.6% and had the highest growth rate in job creation at 3.1%. Same arguments why BC and Vancouver continue to boom along economically. And explains YVR’s continual growth in domestic but even better international growth.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quoti...80105a-eng.htm

And Conference Board of Canada has B.C. and Alberta leading the way in 2017 and expected to continue in 2018.

https://www.biv.com/article/2017/11/...wth-next-year/

^
sure...but Quebec is right up there with BC, explaining why both YVR and YUL are experiencing growth. YUL's assumed location advantage over YYZ has nothing to do with it, which was my main point.

- Quebec has been at its most effecient for major construction projects in decades (Turcot, Champlain, Place des Montréalaises etc...}
- There is room up to Chemin St-François for a major runway.
- Not exagerated at all, it's less costs for a carrier to serve from YUL than YYZ. From YHZ, one hour less to YUL then 30 minutes less to China. From BOS 40 minutes saved. The reason that YUL got the flights to Asia was because of connecting flights to other Eastern airports.

YUL will never see 100M PAX in my lifetime but to say that 50-60M goes against the sayings of ADM.

So O&D didn't have a role to play? Amazing, considering 80% of people who fly in/out of YUL are O&D passengers.

When it comes to runway capacity (and terminal capacity), ADM is grossly exaggerating YUL's potential. You can take my word for it. Even if you don't here's proof.

YUL aircraft movement capacity is roughly 65-70 movements/hour, in good weather (it's my business to know this) .ADM is under the impression we can currently do 99 movements/hour, and eventually get to 106 planes/hour. Needless to say, they are off by almost 40%.

Page IV.

Again, don't believe ADM when it comes to runway capacity. Believe the guy who works for a company that actually controls the runways; namely, me.

No there isn't. I used to work on Chemin st Francois. That parcel of land is being developed (technoparc). A lot of new buildings have gone up recently. Besides, that land is too small to add a 10,000 ft runway. Nor is it in the plans of ADM to do so.

All of this is trivial, as YUL's problem is not lack of runways. It's lack of proper road access, gate space, and lack of taxiways. The land north of runway 06L/24R will help none of these problems.

Yeah but did you even read the articles you posted. Neither support the conclusions you drew from them.
Western Canada (BC and Alberta mainly) to continue leading the country.

- I never said that O/D didn't have a role, I said the Asian flights were put for YUL to be a hub, clearly stated by Air Canada : https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&sourc...5zDs1pyTPHiyTh

- So you're better than ADM now? Are you really that obtuse?

Anyways I'm not an aviation expert but I do have contacts in the field and they don't share your view. I can't judge more than that.

The average human being is better than ADM when it comes to these things. But to answer your first question, yes I am. I am annoyingly insensitive as well, so yes to the second as well!

You might be shocked to hear this, but YUL was a hub before any AC flight to PEK or NRT. Also, you do realize they put that connectivity sentence in virtually every new route announcement out of YYZ, YUL, YVR, YYC etc.

Corrected my statements. Quebec unemployment rate fell below 5% in December, to 4.8%. That's second best in the country, right after BC, and ahead of Ontario and Alberta.

Again, whether they are 1st, 2nd or third, it doesn't change the point I am making about the Quebec economy booming and helping to attract new flights to YUL.

How easy would it be to expand St. Hubert airport? It seems less growth-constrained than YUL, and it's on a rail line and near a freeway junction. I think it's also closer to downtown and certainly closer to the rest of Quebec's population.

Of course it would be a major political challenge, but what airport expansion isn't these days?

Is it that the time airplanes spend on the runway is too high? Or is it the lack of dual taxiways that make that unachievable? Aren't there some airports down in the US that manage to get those kinds of hourly movements? (Genuinely curious)

That seems like a CRAZY number of gates for only two taxiways beneath N3 in the 2033 development drawings. Doesn't that basically become a horseshoe with 40 gates? Has that ever been done before?

You would essentially need to take down YHU and build a new commercial airport from scratch. Not ideal. YUL is constrained, but ADM can tweak things to help alleviate the congestion. This year, YUL will come close to handling 20 million passengers. You would need to invest billions in YHU just to put out the same numbers. YMX would need massive investments as well to handle 20 million pax. So neither airport is a financially sound solution to YUL's problem. ADM has some plans. It will be done, and it will help the airport grow, but to think YUL can handle 60-100 million passengers is insane.

Both. An aircraft that lands on runway 24L often has to exit the runway at the end, due to opposite direction traffic on taxiway A (the parallel taxiway). This increases runway occupancy time for landers. Since runway 24L is our main departure runway, this in turn reduces our departure rate. Dual parallel taxiways would eliminate this problem. On runway 24R, our only high speed exit, B2, is too far down the runway for narrowbodies, and taxiway E is too close, meaning they often miss it. Again, all of this increases runway occupancy time, and reduces aircraft movement capacity.

To the untrained eye, YUL, YYC and YVR should all be able to handle the same number of planes, due to similar airport layout. And yet, on an average day, YVR and YYC have an AAR (airport arrival rate) of around 44/hour. YUL is around 37-38.

There's a reason we call that space the toilet bowl. For one, it looks like it, and 2, it's shitty controlling planes in there. Luckily that is ADM's responsibility. They designed it, let them deal with it.

Too bad SSP doesn't have the "pile of poo emoji". It would have been appropriate right about now.....:D

Does YUL operate the runways as mixed or segregated mode?