Pics (may 2017) from the construction site of Quebec City's Jean Lesage airport's international terminal.


http://www.yqb2018.com/wp-content/pl...f3ddb09e131467


http://www.yqb2018.com/wp-content/pl...85cdafdf012297


http://www.yqb2018.com/wp-content/pl...e79ec87010b515


http://www.yqb2018.com/wp-content/pl...d730c72600b233


http://www.yqb2018.com/wp-content/pl...79b10f58ccef5d


http://www.yqb2018.com/wp-content/pl...7c5fa86aa25270


These last two pics were taken back in november :


http://www.yqb2018.com/wp-content/pl...ac31bc71781b54


http://www.yqb2018.com/wp-content/pl...467b7d4246df4f

http://www.yqb2018.com/wp-content/pl...76f3bc95e43a44


http://www.yqb2018.com/photos-et-videos/

Am I missing something? looking at YUL there is plenty of room for a large terminal expansion on the NE of the existing terminal and if you move the E-W runway to where the de-icing pad is that would provide a TON more room for additional terminal expansions.

25-30 million is a pretty mid-sized airport so I don't think you're anywhere near needing to look at Mirabel.

It would never be Mirabel, even when YUL does hit capacity. I could see smaller operators moving to Montreal-St. Hubert if push came to shove.

Lol, Mirabel is about 40 minutes from downtown Montreal, while Pearson is about 30 min for downtown Toronto. In a world where Dorval doesn't exist, Mirabel is more than a fine location for a major airport. But like everything during that period (80's and 90's), the province stopped having ambitions so they chose to keep Dorval and be forever second (even third nowadays).

What kind of revisionist history is that? The federal government ALONE, killed Mirabel by not having the promised high speed train through downtown and keeping domestic flights at Dorval. YUL was resurrected when the airports' authority were given to ADM.

That's quite a shortcut, and that's not even half true. And Mirabel was a federal project, not a provincial one. We know that the fiasco of this airport was mostly due to a combination of factors, including :

*Air Canada (a crown corporation at that time) lobbied for keeping domestic flights at Dorval, while international flights were to be in Mirabel thus making transborder quite difficult

*Air Canada also transferred lots of intercontinental flights to Pearson during Mirabel's construction; at the same time, the canadian government was investing billions to build Mirabel and also granting many international flights to Pearson... Have they ever wanted Mirabel to work??

*In fact, the federal government decided to lift the transatlantic-hub exclusivity on Montreal in the 70s.

*The government of Quebec never completed the construction of the rail shuttle (should have been handled by the federal) and Highways 13 / 50 (to Ottawa) to the North Shore because the financial burden of this mighty project had been imposed by Ottawa. The provincial government had to build the transit infrastructure and, given the choice, would have preferred a location on the South Shore, which was better connected to the major highways and closer to the USA (potential sites : Drummondville or St-Jean-sur-Richelieu).

That's very interesting. Generally, Canada is a country where the Federal and provincial governments can't work together on long-term, complex planning issues. Mirabel sounds like a perfect case study of this.

It's possible that had everything been handled solely by the Province, that things wouldn't have turned into such a SNAFU.

I could see a Drummondville mega-airport basically becoming like a Quebec version of Schiphol: an airport that essentially serves "The Province" - not just Montreal, but QC and the populated parts of the south shore. Of course, to pull this off there would have to be very comprehensive transit links - like HSR - from places like Quebec City and Montreal to this greenfield, faraway airport. This is something the Province could probably pull of on its own, but I wouldn't have faith that the Province plus the Federal government being able to coordinate this together.

We're dreaming (on rêve en couleurs), but could we imagine this Drummondville airport at the junction of 2 HSR lines (East-West MTL - QC / North-South T-R - Sherbrooke)?? Cruel fate. Instead, we struggled to get Mirabel on track, and then demolished it. Yay.

Mirabel Airport was a classic case of 'grand vision' overreach.

A mega airport anywhere that was being considered at the time would have likely suffered the same fate as Mirabel. The only way Mirabel airport (or any other mega airport) could have survived would be because of a government mandate to close Dorval. That never happened. HSR might have helped Mirabel's cause, but I don't think it would have been decisive.

Airports rely a lot on 'critical mass' to achieve sustainability. Unless there's a reason to leave an established airport - like critical overcrowding (Heathrow), or it serves a narrower niche and can't accommodate all operations (Midway-Chicago or Billy Bishop-Toronto) - it is hard to convince operators to move voluntarily.

Unlike a lot of pre-WWII smaller US airports, Dorval had enough space and capacity to accommodate the next generation of passenger jets and increases in efficiency of airports have allowed existing terminals to accommodate more passengers.

Admittedly, the relationship between the feds and the province wasn't super healthy at the time, but I don't think it had much to do with the failure.

Interesting, Wave46!

Agreed.

The HSR has been decisive (not only IMO, but also documented) ; who would like to do a 1 hour car drive (in good traffic conditions) or 1 hour and a half bus drive in order to take his correspondance in Dorval? HSR between the 2 airports (local and international) would have made it functional.

Air Canada was a crown corporation. It belonged to Canada.

Nice pics of YQB.

Speaking of YQB, it is now a level 2 airport, as defined by IATA worldwide slot guidelines, and will most likely remain so until the terminal building expansion is complete.

A Level 2 airport is one where there is potential for congestion during some periods of the day, week or season, which can be resolved by schedule adjustments mutually agreed between the airlines and facilitator (airport operator). YYC and YUL are also level 2 airports.

Level 3 are slot controlled airports, due to demand significantly exceeding the capacity of the airport during certain times. YYZ and YVR are the only level 3 airports in Canada.

Here is a list of all airports in the world that are level 2 or 3.

http://www.iata.org/policy/infrastru...nex-11.12.xlsx

Interestingly enough, only JFK is a level 3 airport in the States. EWR was downgraded to level 2 last year. Also, DCA and LGA, even though not on the list, are slot controlled as well.

I would disagree with this statement. Generally speaking the Federal and Provincial government do work well together on a host of projects.

Here on the west coast a good example is Skytrain. This system has received a lot of federal and provincial funding from the earliest days. TransCanada highway is another good example. In agriculture GrowForward has been a very successful Federal and Provincial program. The various pacific gateway projects have been part of multi-government strategy to improve the shipment of goods in Western Canada.

The challenge is the Quebec government and Federal government get caught up in petty disagreements. They need to realise there is a single tax payer, and they expect all levels of government to collaborate in spending there money.

Back to Mirabel, a good comparison is Edmonton. That is probably the only example of a major national airport that went through a transition from being a downtown airport to a new large airport outside the city. I think in that case, when the airport opened they banned the use of larger aircraft and the city centre airport.

While HSR would have made it possible to keep it open, what I meant is that in the absence of Dorval's closure, Mirabel still would have been the Gatwick to Dorval's Heathrow if you take my meaning.

I'm aware that AC was a crown corporation at the time, still I could see a fair amount of internal resistance for the logistical hassle of moving airports. I'm surprised the Trudeau government never followed through by moving all of AC's operations there - I don't understand why that never happened. It doesn't matter in the end, I suppose.

That's a decent comparison, but Edmonton-City Centre was limited by the length of runways - I think they were less than 6000'. That pretty much limited operations to domestic and US short haul flights.

Dorval was not limited in that fashion. Indeed, at one point, Dorval was handling Air France A380s.

Correct. And thank God the A380 no longer comes here, let me tell you ! ;)

TS begins YUL-TLV today. Flight operated by A332 C-GTSN. Plane is pushing back now. This is TS's longest flight by distance (YVR-FCO last year was longer). 8,823km, 10h25 eastbound, 11h45 westbound.

https://www.flightradar24.com/flight/ts172

AC begins YUL-TLV in 4 days. Both carriers will operate this route twice weekly.

Updated version ....if im missing something tell m so I can edit !

http://i.imgur.com/OkKHkVG.png

^ wow, there are 84 flights per week between Montréal and France! That's a lot of people!

That jumped out at me too.

When you think about it, it's quite impressive: about the same number of people travel between France and Quebec in 7 days as there were during the entire Nouvelle-France period, approximately 150 years!