Porter to provide passenger flights out of Montreal's Saint-Hubert Airport

Expansion planned at St-Hubert airport The Saint-Hubert Airport on Montreal's South Shore is planning to build a new terminal.

Porter Airlines is planning to develop a new terminal at the Montreal Saint-Hubert Airport, with a goal of serving more than 4 million passengers per year.

The airline carrier made the announcement Monday morning at a news conference at the airport in South Shore Longueuil, saying it will now serve two airports in the Montreal area: Trudeau International (YUL) and Saint-Hubert (YHU).

Porter is planning more than 10 possible routes across Canada, including connections to its two hubs in Toronto.

The nine-gate, 21,000 square-metre terminal will include state-of-the-art passenger and baggage processing, as well as food and beverage concessions and retail vendors.

"We're not talking about a huge Taj Mahal type of terminal. It’s an efficient, simple building. For us it's a big change. We're switching from some kind of a private airport where there were flights schools and some FBOs [fixed-base operators] and some private flights and we're going to switch to a real, domestic airport," said Yanic Roy, managing director, of the Montreal-Saint-Hubert Airport

Aircraft flying out of the terminal would include the 78-seat De Havilland Dash 8-400 and the 132-seat Embraer E195-E2.

The project is expected to create more than 500 permanent jobs, including full-time positions within terminal and airline operations, and the establishment of a new pilot and flight attendant crew base.

The plan follows a similar strategy to the one employed at Toronto's Billy Bishop Airport, which now serves 3 million passengers every year and generates $3 billion of annual economic impact.

Billy Bishop airport is minutes from Toronto's downtown core, much closer than the international Pearson airport.

Saint-Hubert and Trudeau airport are roughly the same distance from downtown Montreal.

"Saint-Hubert has incredible potential as a complementary secondary airport for Montreal, with a convenient location for a significant portion of the local market and also easy access to downtown Montréal," said Michael Deluce, president and CEO, Porter Aviation Holdings Inc., adding that they hope to "create a similar success story" to the Billy Bishop terminal.

The project will begin in mid 2023 and is expected to be completed by the end of 2024.

The announcement comes as Porter continues to expand its fleet, aiming to more than double it from 36 to 79 by 2025 amid intense domestic competition.

The new terminal will be open to other airlines including Pascan Aviation, which currently focuses on regional Quebec flights.

The airport has long been a friction point with residents complaining about noise levels.

Some Saint-Hubert residents protested the announcement Monday, saying public consultation is necessary and the environmental impacts must be studied first.

"We think it's totally against the climate emergency," said Simon King of Coalition Halte-Air Saint-Hubert. "We need to reduce our greenhouse emissions, and this project will add more flights. It's the opposite of what we have to do."

The Saint-Hubert Airport currently sees 200 flights a day. This plan would add 12 more daily and no night flights, a compromise for local citizens, said Longueuil Mayor Catherine Fournier.

"We managed to have an agreement to respect the quality of life of citizens and environmental objectives," she said.

Many markets the size of Montreal can support a secondary airport, said aviation watchdog John Gradek, but he has many questions.

"What's the level of service here?" he said. "What's the attractiveness of the airport to Montrealers – will Montrealers want to cross the bridges to come to Saint-Hubert?"

- with files from The Canadian Press and CTV News Montreal's Christine Long.