Minister Warns of Airport Administration of Cooling Effect on Local Flight Training

The airport administration of the Montreal, Canada area has made a deeply unpopular decision at its Mirabel location. Aéroports de Montréal (ADM) has added an additional fee for its handling of ATC costs for local french-speaking aviators, looking for ways to bring in additional funding to plug a shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars in its administration.

Mirabel airport has announced a fee of $65 per landing, and local flight training staff say the change will make their school's annual fees downright punitive. 

Mirabel's Bloc Québecois MP Jean-Denis Garon says the change is unacceptable, especially following the difficult pandemic the aviation sector recently weathered. For schools that once paid $540 per year, for example, they could now realistically expect to pay $38,000 given the frequency of landings carried out in student's flight training. “ADM does not seem to care much about Mirabel. Their attention is constantly focused on Dorval, while Mirabel remains an afterthought. But with this decision, we just went from an afterthought to downright neglected. This is worse than what we’re used to,” said Garon. 

Garon finds the change as damaging to the francophone pilots of Quebec and Canada, largely taught and finished in Mirabel's local schools. The imposition of the $65 fee could push some students away from the already costly process of paying for instructors and aircraft. “We have flight schools that do amazing work and are renowned for it. They even attract students from abroad who come here to learn to fly in French. We’re talking about people who come here, settle in our community, spend their money, work and fly here.”

FMI: www.copanational.org