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Montreal International (Mirabel) Airport is located in Mirabel, Quebec, near Montreal. The airport serves mainly cargo flights, and is the home base of Bombardier, the world's third largest manufacturer of airliners. It is part of the National Airports System.
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History
During the early 1970s, the Government of Canada planned new airports near its largest cities, Montréal and Toronto, to relieve pressure on Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (then known as Dorval Airport) and Lester B. Pearson International Airport (then known as Toronto International) and to move air traffic away from areas that had become heavily built up. The government expropriated large amounts of land around Mirabel and Pickering for the two airports, creating public opposition to the projects. In Pickering, the opposition was sufficiently strong to stall the project, and the Pickering Airport has still not been built (though the government has held on to the land); in Mirabel, with the 1976 Olympic Games approaching, there was more pressure to complete the airport, and Mirabel opened in 1975.
The original plan was for an airport closer to the city, with reliable passenger links; however, various political considerations moved the airport much further north, with only a (long) road link. Meanwhile, the arrival of longer-range jets that did not need to refuel in Montréal before crossing the Atlantic, together the economic decline of Montréal due to the debt from the Olympic games and economic uncertainty around Quebec separatism, dramatically reduced the amount of air traffic into Dorval, so that a second airport was no longer needed. To try to ensure the airports survival, all international flights for Montréal were banned from Dorval for many years, creating resentment among Montrealers forced to travel far out of town for their flights (and to take long bus rides for connections from domestic to international flights).
In the 30 years since its opening, Mirabel has been perhaps the most commonly used example of an expensive, failed Canadian government project. Montreal-Mirabel International Airport now used exclusively for cargo flights, passenger operations having ceased on October 31, 2004 after many years of limited, primarily charter service.
Disasters
On June 23, 1985, Air India Flight 182, which was flying on a Montreal-London-Delhi-Bombay route, exploded in midair, killing all of the passengers aboard.
See also
External link
- Aéroports de Montréal (http://www.admtl.com/admmaintext.jsp?idbin=218000&pagetitle=Home)fr:Aéroport de Mirabel