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Night flights to end over Laval, St. Laurent
But no such plans for Lachine, source says
CHERYL CORNACCHIA
The Gazette
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Flights from Trudeau airport to continue heading over Lachine. (Gazette file photo)
Night flights over parts of St. Laurent and Laval will end,
but others will continue over Lachine under a new Pierre Elliott
Trudeau International Airport plan, The Gazette has learned.
James Cherry, chief executive of Montreal's airport authority,
plans to deliver the news personally to the mayors of Dorval, Pointe
Claire and St. Laurent this week, according to a source who asked
not to be named.
At the same time, the source said, Cherry will make it clear that
the Aéroports de Montréal has yet to decide what it will do about
proposed night flights over Lachine.
Testing will continue on that night flight path - an easterly
departure from the airport requiring pilots to make a sharp right
turn at 520 feet (158.5 metres) so that planes fly over Lachine's
industrial park and the Mercier Bridge.
Stéphanie Lepage, a spokesperson for the Aéroports de Montréal,
confirmed yesterday that Cherry has asked for a special meeting with
the ADM's soundscape committee, which studies or noise-abatement
measures.
Dorval Mayor Edgar Rouleau, Pointe Claire Mayor Bill McMurchie, St.
Laurent borough mayor Alan DeSousa and Noushig Eloyan, a Montreal
city councillor for Bordeaux Cartierville, are all members of the
soundscape committee.
However, Lepage said, there will be no public comment from ADM
officials concerning night flights and the revised plan until after
the meeting.
Opposition to night flights has grown since September 2006 when new
flight paths introduced nighttime traffic over St. Laurent,
Cartierville, Saraguay, Ahuntsic and Laval's Île Paton.
Prior to that, the majority of night flights - those outside of the
airport's standard operating hours of 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. - were
concentrated over Dorval, Pointe Claire and Lake St. Louis.
At the ADM's annual general meeting in May, Cherry told angry
Montreal-area residents that if the easterly flight path introduced
in September 2006 was failing to meet prescribed criteria, it would
be scrapped.
Similar to the flight path now proposed for Lachine, it required
pilots to make a sharp left turn at an altitude of 520 feet and
follow Highway 13 north. Many planes, however, failed to follow the
route and flew over residential neighbourhoods.
Yesterday, the mayors of the several communities involved declined
comment until after tomorrow's meeting with Cherry.
Lachine, Dorval, Laval, Montreal West, Town of Mount Royal, Pointe
Claire and others have passed municipal resolutions calling for
everything from an outright ban of night flights to a more equal
distribution of them.