End of the Line for the Passenger Terminal at Montréal–Mirabel Airport

It’s time to say au revoir to Montreal’s biggest airport, but it’s not that one you’re probably familiar with. Most of the commercial traffic to and from the city flows in and out of Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, and that airport isn’t going anywhere any time soon. However, some parts of another area airport—Montréal–Mirabel International Airport—will soon be facing the wrecking ball.
According to the folks over at The Globe and Mail, the passenger terminal over at Montréal–Mirabel debuted in 1975 and was touted as the building when it came to all things airport. It was supposed to kind of be the air travel gateway to Canada, but it never really lived up to its hype or its expectation.

Now ten years after the last commercial flight did its thing at the airport the place airport officials are taking bids to come and knock down the passenger terminal and parking structure. The place was supposed to handle up to 50 million passengers a year, but they slightly missed the mark—sounds like 2.8 million passengers was the best they ever did.
No one likes to see a building go to waste, and there were off and on plans to do something different in order to save the structure. At one point there was even the suggestion to open up a theme park at the site, but that idea never really took off—ha.
So we’re sad to see a slice of aviation history head to the big hangar in the sky, but there’s still some good news for fans of Montréal–Mirabel. Nowadays the place is humming with plenty of airplane testing and what not, as Bombardier is using the place to build their new C Series, Pratt and Whitney tests engines here, and there’s plenty of cargo flights doing their thing as well.
[Photo: Wikimedia]