Mirabel closing… finally
October 26th, 2004
Mirabel Airport, which was supposed to be a great international travel hub but instead spent most of its nearly thirty years of existence as a white elephant, is finally closing its doors next week. And it’s about time:
Montreal-Mirabel International Airport employees worked their last week on the massive site as the airports prepares for permanent closure at the end of the month.
When Canadian Prime Minister Pierre-Elliott Trudeau inaugurated the site in October 1975, planners envisioned Mirabel handling some 40 million passengers flying in and out on six strips by 2000.
The fatal flaw was that Mirabel is located some 60 kilometers away from the city it is supposed to serve, and there is no fast public transportation to get from one point to the other.
No major carrier ever located to Mirabel, even though the airport authority sought to be the exclusive home base of trans-Atlantic flights.
A veritable ghost town these past few years, Mirabel’s greatest achievement was perhaps being the filming location of the music video for Our Lady Peace’s “Life”. Not one of the great structures of the city’s history, needless to say.
Mirabel Airport, like the Big O, will forever go down in Montreal history as a great gaffe in judgement. Adios!
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‘Leaving, on a jet plane…’
sorry, I’m always singing offkey.
Rumour is they plan to use Mirabel as a place to train counter-terrorism units in the event of a terrorist airport takeover, although I can’t confirm this. The Gazette said something along those lines, hopefully we’ll learn more soon. It’s not a bad idea; we don’t seem to have too many defunct, fully-functional airports lying around.