Airport hub · YUL
Montréal-Trudeau closed 2025 essentially flat — 22.364 million passengers, −0.5% — but the mix beneath the line is the story: international traffic grew 2.4% to 10.87 million while the US transborder sector fell 9.5%, and 71% of all passengers are now on non-domestic flights, the highest international share of any Canadian airport. Aéroports de Montréal posted record revenue of CAD 960.8 million.
YUL’s flat headline conceals a complete rotation. Domestic traffic grew 1.9% to 6.80 million; other international grew 2.4% to 10.87 million; and transborder fell 9.5% to 4.70 million. The result: 71% of the airport’s passengers are now on non-domestic flights — the highest proportion among Canada’s airports — and Montréal-Trudeau has become the fifth-busiest transatlantic hub in North America.
The Montreal–Paris route is the busiest international route in Canada and the sixth-busiest from North America, with more than 1.5 million passengers a year. In 2025 the network added Cincinnati, Edinburgh, Bermuda, Naples and Valencia, taking YUL to about 159 direct destinations; Air Transat adds Istanbul in October 2026. Roughly 58,000 passengers transit per day, with US border preclearance — one of only nine Canadian airports with it — compressing connection times.
The financials tell you where the airport thinks it is going: ADM revenue hit a record CAD 960.8 million (+4.8%, +35.9% versus 2019) and EBITDA reached $442.9 million, while capital investments jumped 58.6% to $696.5 million — including $113.7 million for the REM airport station that ties the terminal directly into the new light-rail spine.
The TIO framing: watch the international line, and the REM opening. YUL absorbed the same −9.5% transborder hit as Toronto and Vancouver without losing a single point of international growth — that is what a Europe-facing hub looks like in a US downturn. The REM station opening converts the airport from a bus-and-taxi gateway into a rail-node gateway; its first full year, 2026–27, is the cleanest test of whether Montreal’s hub thesis deepens.
The TIO Read: flat is the new up for US-exposed Canadian gateways, and YUL wears it best. A −9.5% transborder collapse absorbed while international adds 2.4% is the signature of an airport whose centre of gravity is Paris, not New York. The record CAD 960.8M revenue and the REM station under construction say management agrees: the future is a European-style rail-connected hub. Watch two numbers in 2026 — the transborder recovery rate and the REM’s airport-station ridership. If both recover, Montreal becomes the only North American city where the airport, the convention centre and the new rail line all point at the same transatlantic traveller.
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