A page is turning at the Saint-Hubert airport, where the preparatory work for the future new terminal will soon begin with the excavation and leveling of the land. The $200 million project is due for delivery by the end of 2024, but it won’t welcome its first passengers until the summer of 2025.
“From now on, it’s a race against time. We must succeed in beating winter, in other words, we must complete the preparation of the ground and the excavation before the frost ”, explains to La Presse the vice-president of corporate affairs of the airport, Simon-Pierre Diamond.
Tuesday, at the passage of La Presse, workers were already busy installing the security fence that will separate the vast construction area from the current airport, in order to ensure the fluidity of airport operations which continue. “As soon as that’s done, we’ll start digging the new terminal. In about two weeks, there’s going to be trucks all over here, it’s going to be very busy,” Diamond said.
The terminal built by Porter Airlines – which will be its main user with Pascan Aviation – will consist of nine boarding gates and will eventually accommodate more than four million passengers. “Having said that, we know that we won’t have that number on day 1. In fact, for the first year, we expect more than one million passengers approximately,” explains Mr. Diamond.
For the moment, the service of the terminal will be mainly Canadian and regional. Porter Airlines will provide service to major Canadian cities, while Pascan Aviation will offer flights to various Quebec municipalities. In total, around fifteen flights will be able to take off daily from the new terminal.
Under its lease with Transport Canada, Aéroports de Montréal (ADM) – the operator of Montréal-Trudeau and Mirabel – still benefits from an exclusivity clause for international flights. In other words, a plane that takes off from Saint-Hubert cannot so far transport passengers to the United States or sun destinations.
“For the moment, we especially want to deliver our domestic service. Once this objective has been achieved, we will reassess for the future. But that’s not the plan. The terminal has no customs, it is not intended for international use,” says Diamond.
However, nothing prevents the terminal from growing over the years, he adds.
In principle, the new terminal will have been completed by the end of 2024, but it will be necessary to allow a “reasonable time” before the first flights. These should take place as soon as June or July 2025, at the latest, says the airport. A more detailed timeline will be specified during an official announcement scheduled for this fall with several partners.
Including the 130-room Holiday Inn hotel which is also to be built near the new terminal, the total project will cost more than 200 million. Porter Airlines, the hotel promoter and Saint-Hubert airport will fully share the bill. No public money will therefore be invested in the project.
The announced expansion of the Saint-Hubert airport is not just making people happy. The organization Urgence climatique Montérégie, which is part of the Coalition Halte-Air Saint-Hubert, notably requested a moratorium in March “in order to be able to evaluate any project that may be developed in order to see its noise, health and climate impacts”.
“There has been no health impact study, despite the fact that there is GHG pollution which is estimated at around 500,000 tonnes per year if the airport is in full operation all year round. It’s like doubling all the automobile pollution in Longueuil, it’s of that order,” laments coalition member and UQAM professor Julien Keller, who laments that Porter Airlines planes “are noisy,” unlike what the authorities want to imply.
From a strictly economic point of view, Mr. Keller says he is “convinced that we are heading towards a Mirabel fiasco”. “It’s going to be the white elephant of the Longueuil agglomeration, we’re sure of it. We do not believe in their economic model. And again, there has been no serious impact study, ”he says.
For Simon-Pierre Diamond, communication with citizens has since made “real progress” on the sound environment and the issue of the environment in recent months. “One or two years ago, there weren’t really discussions. There, the dialogue is open, ”he recalls.
“The project will be done with latest generation aircraft which are much quieter. Ultimately, the quality of life of local residents will improve. We are able to equip ourselves with noise management technologies that we could not necessarily buy before”, illustrates the manager.
