Montreal-Ottawa Bus Services!

[Seat62K]

Another recent thread has reminded me of the bus service which BA and KLM operated between Montreal Dorval (and perhaps, at an earlier point, Mirabel) and Ottawa.

Two questions:

Did any other airline(s) operate a similar service between the two cities?

Given the proximity of a great many other cities to these airlines' North American gateways, why Ottawa and not also elsewhere? (The only reason I can think of is that it is Canada's capital city.)

All responses gratefully received.

Thanks!

[ICT_SLB]

Seat,
Think you've got it the wrong way round - Dorval (CYUL) was well before Mirabel (CYMX) as well as after. Beleive Ottawa (CYOW) only had a long enough runway for even medium jets relatively recently - I seem to remember a runway extension/rebuild about 10-15 years ago. Prior to Dorval, which started life as the Canadian end of the Transaltantic Ferry Bridge, the main Montreal airport was Cartierville (CYCV) - see the Airfields thread.

BTW I was at Mirabel today and it's no longer a controlled airfield - can you imagine that happening to its contemporary, Dulles (IAD)?

[Patroni]

When I went to Ottawa 3 years ago or so, I flew with Swiss to YUL and connected on their bus service YUL-YOW. The stop in Ottawa was the train station by the way, not the airport.

[TLB]

CYOW has had two runways (07-25, 8,000 ft and 14-32, 10,000 ft) for at least the past 40 years that I have flown in and out of it.

I do recall that KLM had a bus service from downtown Ottawa to CYMX back in the 1990s when Mirabel was (for a brief time) the default International Airport for the Montreal region. CYMX never really caught on and most all flights are now in and out of CYUL.

[India Four Two]

Some years ago I was on a BA flight from London to Toronto with an intermediate stop at Montreal. It was a night arrival and as we were descending over the city, the Captain came on the PA: "Ladies and gentlemen, for those of you on the left side, you can see Dorval airport, conveniently located close to the centre of the city. We are not going there. We are descending into the darkness north of the city where, trust me, there really is an airport!"

During the brief turn-around at Mirabel, one of the FAs told me they referred to the airport as Horrible.

[Seat62K]

I don't think Mirabel is used by any passenger airlines, not even charter ones.

If anyone wants to see what it looked like, the Tom Hanks' movie "The Terminal" was filmed there.