Montréal–Trudeau International Airport
Facts on YUL
Trudeau's government built Montréal–Mirabel to handle projected traffic growth, and when it opened on November 29, 1975, its 70 km2 operations zone and 290 km2 buffer zone made it the largest airport in the world by land area.
Source: Wikipedia
The airport is named for Pierre Trudeau, who served as Canada's 15th prime minister from 1968–79 and 1980–84. He pioneered official bilingualism and multiculturalism, patriated Canada's constitution in 1982, and established the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, achieving full Canadian sovereignty.
Source: Wikipedia
Montreal's Dorval airport was renamed Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport on January 1, 2004, on the federal government's initiative. The renaming drew opposition from Quebec sovereigntists and from aviation historians who recalled that Trudeau's government had been the driving force behind building Mirabel Airport to replace Dorval.
Source: Wikipedia
The expected traffic growth never materialized at Mirabel, partly because longer-range jets no longer needed to refuel in Montreal en route across the Atlantic. All international scheduled flights returned to Dorval by 1997, but airlines had already shifted their eastern Canadian gateway to Toronto Pearson.
Source: Wikipedia
Montréal–Trudeau is Air Canada's headquarters and one of three Air Canada hubs; 71% of its passengers are on non-domestic flights, the highest proportion of any Canadian airport, and Montreal–Paris is Canada's busiest international air route, carrying more than 1.5 million passengers a year.
Source: Wikipedia
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Dorval Airport took in seven flights diverted from closed U.S. airspace under Operation Yellow Ribbon, even though pilots had been asked to avoid the airport for security reasons; Mirabel took in ten more.
Source: Wikipedia
A CAD 716 million expansion between 2000 and 2007 added a U.S. preclearance jetty, an international terminal and a new customs hall, raising Montréal–Trudeau's capacity to 15 million passengers a year; by the end of 2007 a total of CAD 1.5 billion had been invested.
Source: Wikipedia
Gate 55, on Montréal–Trudeau's international jetty, was purpose-built for the Airbus A380 with two jet bridges able to load both decks simultaneously — though as of the mid-2020s no airline operates the type there.
Source: Wikipedia