A├®roports de Montr├®al: Montr├®al-Trudeau International Airport

A hub of activity┬áThough at first glance airports appear to have their own captive markets, behind the scenes there is a great deal of competitive activity, as Alan Swaby learns. At Montr├®al-Trudeau International Airport, visitors from the United States are a pretty pampered lot. In order to give them a last taste of Canadian relaxation before being reabsorbed into the hurly-burly of home life, American visitors are allowed to clear customs and immigration back into the US before theyÔÇÖve even finished their trip to Quebec.  When they pass through the trans-border hall, they effectively enter into American space, so on their return back home, they can head directly for their bus, train or car without spending a second waiting to go through customs and passport control.Although this procedure means less hanging around, it doesnÔÇÖt mean that itÔÇÖs easier for nefarious characters to slip undetected over the border. Quite the contrary. Visitors and their luggage need to go through a more intensive process of screening. All bags are photographed and weighed and then bar-coded to correspond with a boarding pass before going through the most sophisticated explosive detection and X-ray scanners on the market.┬á Anything then or later that causes immigration officers to suspect something is not quite rightÔÇöwhether itÔÇÖs related to the luggage itself or the way a passenger behaves prior to embarkationÔÇömeans that luggage can easily be retracted within 15 minutes from the highly automated baggage handling system, which knows exactly where each item is at any part of the loading procedure. After being subjected to more elaborate inspection, thereÔÇÖs still time to get bags and passenger back on the flight should the all-clear be sounded. To keep everyone on their toes, there is also a random sample of baggage that is given closer, personal inspection.Montr├®al-TrudeauÔÇÖs procedures are the first instance of all these security measures being used in their entirety and are part of $1 billion of work that has been started since upgrading of the airport began in 2001. ÔÇ£ItÔÇÖs not just a question of security,ÔÇØ says Henri-Paul Martel, vice president of engineering and construction. ÔÇ£The success of the airport depends on maintaining high levels of passenger satisfaction so that people continue to travel by air, using our airport. So everything we are doing is market driven.ÔÇØOf course, airports per se donÔÇÖt take passengers anywhere. Instead, they are the vital link between destination city, airline operators and travelers. ÔÇ£As the city of Montr├®al develops and increases its attractiveness as a destination,ÔÇØ explains Christiane Beaulieu, vice president public affairs, ÔÇ£airlines will develop an interest in adding that route, which will then automatically make demands on us to enhance our facilities.ÔÇØAt present, the 40 airlines using Montr├®al-Trudeau and the many different planes they use call for different jetty configurations. The airlines fly to almost 100 destinations: approximately 40 percent of traffic is Canadian domestic, another 25 percent goes to the US (trans-border), and the remaining 35 percent is international, the highest of any Canadian airport. During the winter season, Canadians head for ÔÇ£sunspotÔÇØ vacation destinations in Mexico and the Caribbean. In the warmer months there is still a strong attachment to Europe, with ten flights a day to destinations throughout France, including four Air France nonstop flights to Paris.ÔÇ£Passengers donÔÇÖt like waiting in line,ÔÇØ says Martel, ÔÇ£so we have implemented many changes to reduce waiting to a minimum, always remembering, though, that security is the top priority.ÔÇØToday, passengers register by email or SMS. There are more security gates for them to use, and because the trend is to go through security earlier rather than later, the airport has built more food and beverage shops on the flight side of security control. Hotels near terminals are commonplace, but at Montr├®al-Trudeau there is the unique feature of a Marriott hotel directly above the trans-border jetty.ÔÇ£This is an interesting part of the airport refurbishment,ÔÇØ says Martel. ÔÇ£We have rented space above the trans-border hall to a private developer who is building the Marriott, but the airport will then rent back the top two floors of the hotel to be used as our headquarters.ÔÇØThe airport has come up with another ingenious solution for using its space to maximum effect. Flights to and from the US tend to be early in the day, while international flights leave later in the day. The airport uses ÔÇ£swing gates,ÔÇØ i.e., gates sited closest to the relevant parts of the terminalÔÇödomestic, trans-border or internationalÔÇöconfigured for dual purposes. A series of movable walls send passengers on their way to America in the morning and Paris in the evening.The one thing missing from the airport at present is a rail link to downtown Montr├®al. ÔÇ£ItÔÇÖs something that has been on the agenda for a long time,ÔÇØ says Martel, ÔÇ£and it will happen. In fact, we already have the airport end station. We planned and built that as part of the overall changes being made.ÔÇØStudies are well underway to build a passenger rail link between the airport and the downtown core. The pre-feasibility study has identified two possible routes passing to the south of the airport: the CN route terminating at central station and the CP route terminating at Lucien-Lallier. At present, both CN and CP networks are used mainly for freight trains, and there is little capacity available for an airport express train. So, in both cases, additional track is needed. A decision regarding the best route will be taken in the coming months.At the time of writing the swine flu had just hit the news, and the first cases had already been reported. Airports will then unwittingly become the conduit for the illness traveling around the world. ÔÇ£After the SARS incident in 2003,ÔÇØ says Beaulieu, ÔÇ£a lot was learned about how best to handle the danger. All the authorities agree that stopping it from spreading will be impossible, but nevertheless, airports have set procedures in place to minimize the effects.ÔÇØ  ÔÇô Editorial research by Jim Rose