How Montreal’s airport survived a massive, failed attempt to replace it with a giant

Countries & Cities · Published 10 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Montreal–Trudeau International Airport was once slated for obsolescence. In the 1970s, the government built the world's largest airport, Mirabel, to replace it entirely. Yet, shifting aviation technology and passenger preference for proximity kept the original site alive, leading to a decades-long renaissance that transformed the airport into a global hub.

In 1960, Montreal–Dorval International Airport opened a $30 million terminal, which was then the largest in Canada. By the 1970s, however, the federal government, led by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, predicted that Dorval would reach saturation by 1985. To accommodate projected growth, they constructed Montréal–Mirabel International Airport, which opened in 1975 with an operations zone of 70 square kilometers. The plan was to shift all international traffic to Mirabel and eventually close Dorval, which sat just 20 kilometers from downtown compared to Mirabel’s 58-kilometer distance.

The strategy faltered when the expected traffic failed to materialize. The advent of longer-range jets in the 1980s allowed airlines to bypass Montreal's need for refueling stops, and the city's economic downturn further reduced demand. Passengers grew to resent the long commute to Mirabel, and the split-airport system—with domestic flights at Dorval and international at Mirabel—made connections cumbersome. International airlines began favoring Toronto Pearson as their primary Canadian gateway. Facing these realities, the government consolidated international flights back to Dorval in 1997, officially renaming it Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport in 2004.

Since its return to prominence, the airport has undergone massive modernization. Aéroports de Montréal, a not-for-profit corporation, financed over $1.5 billion in upgrades by 2007 without government grants. These expansions included new jetties for international and transborder flights, gate modifications to accommodate the Airbus A380, and the integration of art installations. Today, Trudeau serves as the third-busiest airport in Canada, handling 22.4 million passengers in 2025. It remains a critical hub, with 71% of its traffic on non-domestic flights—the highest proportion of any Canadian airport—proving that the city's original gateway was more resilient than its planners ever imagined.

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