MET - Montreal Metropolitan Airport - previously Montreal Saint-Hubert Airport - is a recently rebranded airport located 15 km from downtown Montreal. The airport will be welcoming its first passengers in 2025 with 25 destinations across Canada.
What is driving the demand for additional airport capacity in the Montreal area?
There's a significant demand; by 2030, Montreal is expected to handle 30 million passengers, reaching 40 million by 2040, and 50 million by 2050. Like Toronto and Vancouver already have, Montreal will need multiple airports to accommodate this growth. Since the privatization of airports in the 90s, the focus has been on increasing destinations, passengers, and revenue. However, as an urban airport, we needed community support, conducting 150 meetings with officials and stakeholders and holding three public consultations. The public's primary concerns were no night activities, support for regional airlines, and fostering aerospace innovation.
We decided on three pillars for our project: formal community involvement, support for regional airlines, and innovation. Regional airlines in Quebec face challenges due to small volumes and long distances, which aren't profitable for classic airports. We've designed our project with community input and formed an airport development table including politicians, stakeholders, and green groups to ensure the project evolves with community needs. Since privatization, many airports have forgotten their role as community infrastructure, but we aim to serve the community effectively.
MET initially faced considerable community objections to its development. How did you address the resistance to garnering support for the project?
The main objections stemmed from the airport's history as Canada's oldest, with many flight schools and frequent low-altitude flights causing disturbances. Initially, there was scepticism about expanding airport activities. We addressed these concerns by banning night flights and forming a consultation table with officials and critical stakeholders. We also improved communication transparency, publishing noise studies and hosting quarterly public meetings.
These measures have shown results. Noise levels have decreased by 20% due to newer, quieter aircraft. Additionally, our focus on innovation, such as introducing flight simulators to reduce movements, has helped gain public support. A recent poll showed a 77% approval rate, demonstrating that our efforts to engage and address community concerns have been effective. Complaints have significantly decreased to around only 10% of people now opposed, showing a growing acceptance of the project.
One of the key features of MET will be its vision of advancing green technologies. How exactly will the model allow for reduced carbon footprint and more eco-friendly practices?
We are implementing several measures to make the terminal as green as possible, having banned larger carriers, focusing on single-aisle, narrow-body planes. Additionally, we started a process with the Minister of Transport to ban the noisiest aeroplanes at night. We're also reducing the number of flight schools and introducing flight simulators to cut down on flight movements, aiming for a 50% reduction in flights. These efforts, combined with using newer aircraft like the Embraer E-2, are already yielding positive environmental impacts.
We are also promising a smooth process, where passengers need only arrive 30 minutes before boarding, aiming to handle 2 million passengers initially with a maximum capacity of 4 million. Additionally, we are working on ground transportation including connecting the airport to the nearby railway. Through various projects, including a hotel, a Congress Hall, shops, restaurants, office spaces, and lab spaces we want to develop the surrounding areas of the airport. Having this level of community engagement, innovation hub and regional flight focus make the MET a new model of airport development.
Canadians travelling within the country are facing increasingly high ticket costs. How do you plan to mitigate the high cost of flying for everyday Canadians?
We have control over landing fees and aim to keep them low, as we're a not-for-profit organization. By developing alternative revenue streams such as real estate attached to innovation and industrial development, we can maintain low landing fees.
While airport charges make up only about 5% of an airline's costs, we aim to keep them as low as possible; being a smaller, newer organization allows us to maintain lower costs. By providing additional capacity in a congested market, we can help reduce delays and improve airline efficiency, which may have a small impact on ticket prices. We also focus on developing alternative revenue sources, such as real estate and industrial development, to keep landing fees low. This strategy allows us to support airlines and indirectly contribute to making air travel more affordable for Canadians.
Last year you announced the building of a new terminal, funded by Porter Airlines. What is the strategy for attracting airlines to the new terminal?
Our strategy includes working with existing local airlines like the regional airline Pascan Aviation and Porter Airlines, our anchor airline. We are currently targeting domestic airlines, as Montreal has a monopoly on international flights. Our focus is on providing capacity to airlines in a market where many Canadian airports are congested. This will help improve airline costs and potentially reduce ticket prices.
This year you unveiled plans for the ‘Living Lab for Innovation in Aerospace’ (LIA). What is the main purpose of this initiative?
Alongside the construction of a new passenger terminal, we want to actively contribute towards the green transition of the industry by fostering innovation of new aerospace technologies. The ‘Living Lab’ project involves collaboration with educational institutions - which will be a first for the academic sector - and companies like Pratt & Whitney. The idea is to offer the airport as a research platform integrating research and experimentation into a daily part of operations.
In terms of research areas, we are at the moment agnostic; it could be in AI, it could be new materials, or even agriculture. Access to a unique study environment - including our workforce and facilities - means experimentation can take place in a real-world setting and a multidisciplinary community of experts can share knowledge and promote innovation within the sector. This is the first of its kind in the airport business.
