Longueuil | Announced end of commercial night flights at Saint-Hubert Airport

After years of complaints from citizens, exasperated by the noise, the City of Longueuil and the Saint-Hubert Airport are moving forward to ban commercial flights at night, starting in April 2024.

In the same breath, the two partners announced that, rather than betting on commercial flights, they would work together to develop an aerospace innovation zone at the airport, by making nearly one million square meters of land owned by the airport and the City.

“In recent years, the issue of night flights has been a major irritant for citizens,” recalled the Mayor of Longueuil, Catherine Fournier, Thursday at a press conference. “So, from 2024, we will see the end of commercial night flights, a rule modeled on what is done at Montreal-Trudeau Airport, where night flights are also prohibited. It will be clearly defined, between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. This is a major gain for the quality of life of the region’s population. »

Private planes will however be able to continue to operate at night, said the airport’s general manager, Yanic Roy. We know that the planes of hockey teams coming to play games in Montreal and of artists on musical tours, in particular, land and take off in Saint-Hubert at night.

But according to Mr. Roy, these thefts do not generate complaints. “Almost all of the complaints concern the Boeing 737-200, which flies two to three times a week at night. This nuisance will be eliminated in 2024,” he says.

This plane, very noisy, is used by the company Chrono Aviation to take the employees of a mining company to the Far North. The company’s contract with Saint-Hubert Airport expires in April 2024. Future contracts to be signed with commercial carriers will stipulate that they cannot use the airport at night.

Residents of the area will soon have online access to noise level data at different times of the day.

Public consultations over the past year on the development of the airport have shown that citizens are not opposed to the development of the airport and the increase in the number of flights, but not to the detriment their quality of life, said Ms.^me Fournier.

Aerospace Innovation Zone

Yanic Roy revealed at a press conference that the airport still had a terminal project in its boxes, but that we were far from an announcement on this subject.

The airport cannot, for the moment, attract carriers wishing to offer international connections since the Montreal-Trudeau Airport has the exclusivity of these flights in the region.

Rather than betting on the development of commercial flights, the airport and the City will make every effort to attract aerospace companies to the land surrounding the landing strip, which work in particular on the development of green technologies.

Catherine Fournier even spoke of a “historic agreement”, which is part of the Climate Plan that Longueuil is finalizing.

“We have a vision of having a major economic project, the biggest in recent years in Longueuil, which is to develop the aerospace innovation zone in the airport zone,” announced the mayor. We already have very, very important players in the territory like Pratt & Whitney and Héroux-Devtek. We want to build this aerospace cluster in the airport sector, leveraging land that already belongs to the airport. It will bring major attractiveness and economic dynamism to the City of Longueuil and the region. »

The École nationale d’aérotechnique (ENA), an institution affiliated with Cégep Édouard-Montpetit which offers training in avionics, aerospace engineering and aircraft maintenance, participates in particular in the Partners’ Table to develop the vision for the development of this area.

The airport has 500,000 square meters of available land that can be leased to businesses in the area. Those of the City total 475,000 square meters; Longueuil is willing to put them up for sale to develop this area.

“A year is a long time! »

The Longueuil Aircraft Anti-Pollution Committee (CAPA-L) believes that the commitment of the mayor and the airport manager to prohibit commercial flights at night is a “step in the right direction”. But citizens would have liked the changes to come into force more quickly.

“A year is a long time! “says Marie-Pierre Brunelle, spokesperson for CAPA-L and resident of the Laflèche district, which adjoins the airport.

“We, what we would like is concrete actions in the short term,” she adds. We’ve been experiencing noise since 2019. What we don’t understand is why this plane, which is banned from other airports because it’s too noisy, can land here, in an urban area. »

M^me Brunelle also regrets that nothing has been announced about flight schools, whose planes are constantly flying in the air in the area.