Hubert Meilleur

Mirabel's death rattle Mayor convinced passenger flights will go

ANN CARROLL
Montreal Gazette
Sunday, May 05, 2002

It's not official, but Mirabel Mayor Hubert Meilleur isn't waiting for confirmation of the rumoured departure of passenger flights from Mirabel airport to mourn their passing.

"It's stupid," the mayor said yesterday. "The ADM (Aéroports de Montréal) wants to close Mirabel."

Meilleur said he has no doubts that Mirabel's days are numbered as a charter-transit site and, eventually, as an airport.

"We have it from sure sources in the ADM that there won't be any more passenger flights to Mirabel," the mayor said. "They say it will happen in spring or fall of 2003.

"That means closing a runway, and losing jobs.

"The worst is that we're wasting $800 million on an action plan to develop Dorval, and in 10 years that airport will be too small."

Losing Money

The mayor was responding to a report yesterday in Journal de Montréal, claiming the airport authority planned to move the last charter flights from Mirabel to Dorval by April 2003.

That would leave only cargo traffic at the troubled Mirabel, which has been losing money since scheduled passenger services shifted to Dorval in 1997.

Two weeks ago, in an interview with The Gazette, ADM chief executive James Cherry noted Mirabel's losses this year were expected to reach $17 million, slightly lower than in the previous two years. Consolidating all passenger traffic at Dorval would save millions of dollars, he said.

ADM spokesman Jacqueline Richard yesterday refused to answer questions about ADM strategy and rumoured plans to remove passenger traffic from Mirabel within a year.

"There will no comment on that issue," she said, adding ADM is holding a general assembly in Montreal on Thursday.

The airport authority has been in talks with Air Transat about moving its charter service to Dorval.

Meilleur said Mirabel handled about 1.4 million Air Transat passengers in 2001, before Sept. 11. (Those numbers dropped by almost 40 per cent in the first three months of this year.)

The loss of the remaining passenger flights would hurt the local economy, he said.

The airport's Château Mirabel is already suing the airport authority and the federal government for over $70 million for revenues lost after the move of international flights.

As for the municipality, officials have seen the writing on the wall, and they are developing a residential and industrial base to compensate for lost airport revenues.

Airport activity, which counted for almost half the town's revenues in the 1970s, now accounts for about 15 per cent of the municipal budget.

With a population of 27,330 - an increase of more than 20 per cent since the 1996 national census - Mirabel is now one of the fastest growing communities across Canada.

"If they close the airport, we'll develop it as an industrial park - that's what will save us," Meilleur said.

- Ann Carroll's E-mail address is [email protected].

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