The £1 billion airport that was the largest in the world – but it never gets used
Canada's Montreal-Mirabel Airport was built with big ambitions in mind but has not seen a commercial flight take off since 2004.
At a cost of 500 million Canadian dollars (roughly £300 million), it became the world’s largest airport by land area when it opened in 1975.
In today’s market, if we consider inflation, that figure would be closer to 2 billion Canadian dollars (£1.1 billion).
But despite early high expectations and targets, the airport has struggled to live up to its potential.
Mirabel’s downfall can be blamed on the lack of infrastructure.
The airport sits more than 30 miles from Montreal and was designed to handle large numbers of international passengers.
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However, the high-speed train link to the heart of the city, which was extremely important to the airport’s success, was never built.
Without it, passengers found the location too inconvenient, and airlines soon began to choose Toronto’s better-connected Pearson Airport.
By the early 2000s, Montreal-Mirabel had stopped handling passenger flights altogether.
While it is still operational today, the airport only accepts cargo flights. The site is also used for occasional events such as go-karting.
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Despite this, there’s still hope that Mirabel could one day generate substantial revenue. It was predicted that at its busiest, the airport could accommodate approximately 50 million passengers a year.
While there is still a possibility for that to happen, the transport links would need to be improved. But the question now is, whether it is at all financially feasible for the project to be restarted.
Although Mirabel may never become the busy travel hub it was meant to be, it remains in use and has big potential.
Some experts even believe that with the right investment or shift in demand, the airport could still bring in millions of passengers and dollars each year.
