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Originally Posted by YOWhopeful
How will you boycott YUL? Where will you fly from?
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I did fly from YUL in April. No issues in the shoulder months, I am boycotting the summer months of June, July and August.
A couple of years ago, I did drive to Burlington (VT) and flew to JFK. From there you can fly anywhere in the US really. I was going to Florida then so it was convenient. Ticket was about 20% cheaper and parking fare at BTV was not unreasonable. Even with the 90 minutes drive, it was worth it. It's close to the time you will be waste trying to get to YUL anyway.
I would do it again if I needed to fly to the US in the warmer months. I am not even kidding, I wouldn't have to leave much earlier than if I was flying from YUL since you have at least an hour in traffic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zahav
You think ADM's decision to stick with YUL was wrong? It seems like the right decision to me, Mirabel was too damaged (reputation wise) at the time and YUL was closer to the city (a huge plus. And of course the transborder and domestic connections, with transborder especially proving to be a growth sector and hand in hand with international growth (ie. US pax to Europe via YUL). There is still room to expand, look at airports like Heathrow and Gatwick, and you can see how you can accomodate with limited resources (Heathrow is in a tight land base, but keeps increasing their capacity, Gatwick has over 40M pax with one runway ffs, YUL is able to accomodate (I don't know anything about ADMTL as an organization, so not commenting on their abilities to do it properly), but just that it was the right choice to keep YUL and grow it, and leave Mirabel until absolutely necessary. Hopefully they can smooth out the growing pains and handle the steady increases. It's a nice problem to have, too much demand. In a competitive world, most places biggest struggle is to grow and gain routes/carriers, if they can get that they will figure out the proper growth. Mirabel was the polar opposite, large facilities, newer, wide open space, but lacked the demand. I would much rather have the demand than the shiny empty terminal that cost a fortune and no one flies to...
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It was the wrong decision and it is becoming more and more obvious by the day. YUL is growing now but the infrastructure surrounding it is not made for more than 25M passengers annually. Shoulder months are fine for now but as soon as the airport serves more than 2M passengers a month (July, August), it becomes absolute chaos with traffic.
Just because people preferred YUL over YMX at that time because of its proximity to the city does not mean it is the correct thing to do. Managers/operators are supposed to look at the long-term when making such decisions. Force the population to use YMX. Unpopular, yes but I like to say short-term pain for long-term gain. Ask those people TODAY if they will drive to Mirabel instead if they had the options. You will get much difference responses than 30 years ago.
What do you think will happen to YUL after a couple of chaotic summers? Montrealers will start to look for alternatives eventually and it will be reflected in the numbers. Dorval will plateau at about 30M in a few years and will stay there. YHU would not be a big enough terminal to relieve anything.
YMX could have had 30M passengers by now with plenty of room to grow and there wouldn't have been any need for YUL.
But when mistakes are made, you will be stuck with smallish airport with extremely limited capacity to grow. That is what incompetence leads to... it is what it is.
