Montreal Airport Parking

[MillbrookMom]

Has anyone flown from Montreal recently?  We are planning to fly to Europe in May and our neighbour said the airport, especially parking is a nightmare lately.  While we do plan to reserve our parking ahead of time, he indicated that we may still not get a spot.  Any info would be appreciated.  

[lx200gps]

37 minutes ago, MillbrookMom said:

Has anyone flown from Montreal recently?  We are planning to fly to Europe in May and our neighbour said the airport, especially parking is a nightmare lately.  While we do plan to reserve our parking ahead of time, he indicated that we may still not get a spot.  Any info would be appreciated.  

Montrealer here. Your neighbor is only partly correct. There are serious issues accessing the airport proper at certain times of the day, particularly in the afternoon up to dinner time, with sometimes kilometers long traffic jams to get near the terminal and parking lots, but parking is not typically a problem. Since you are flying to Europe, that probably means a late afternoon departure, which right now is the problem time. As to actually parking, there are no issues with getting parking spaces. The ADM website lets you see exactly what the status of each parking lot is at any given time and you will see that there will almost certainly be parking spots available. If you are OK with off-airport parking, then things are even easier.  Note also that the Montreal airport is about to open a massive new covered parking garage, to be called P4, not far from the Marriott hotel and it should greatly alleviate any parking problems once it opens in the next month or two.

 

https://www.admtl.com/en/access/parking

[bebe08]

We live in the Ottawa area and if we can't get direct flights from Ottawa we  fly from  Montreal.  We take the train to Montreal and there is a shuttle from the Via rail station to the airport - only 5 mins away.  That way we don't have the hassle of parking.  Figure what we spend on train tickets is less than what it would cost to park at the airport.  We either take a cab or get a ride to the train station in Ottawa.  Is that an option for you? 

 

[MillbrookMom]

1 hour ago, bebe08 said:

We live in the Ottawa area and if we can't get direct flights from Ottawa we  fly from  Montreal.  We take the train to Montreal and there is a shuttle from the Via rail station to the airport - only 5 mins away.  That way we don't have the hassle of parking.  Figure what we spend on train tickets is less than what it would cost to park at the airport.  We either take a cab or get a ride to the train station in Ottawa.  Is that an option for you? 

 

Thank you for the tip.  We live just north of Renfrew, we do have friends in Kanata where we could park and then Uber to the train Station.  I will have to look into this option vs parking in Montreal.  But not sure if it would make sense for us.  Thank you for though.  

[MillbrookMom]

15 hours ago, lx200gps said:

Montrealer here. Your neighbor is only partly correct. There are serious issues accessing the airport proper at certain times of the day, particularly in the afternoon up to dinner time, with sometimes kilometers long traffic jams to get near the terminal and parking lots, but parking is not typically a problem. Since you are flying to Europe, that probably means a late afternoon departure, which right now is the problem time. As to actually parking, there are no issues with getting parking spaces. The ADM website lets you see exactly what the status of each parking lot is at any given time and you will see that there will almost certainly be parking spots available. If you are OK with off-airport parking, then things are even easier.  Note also that the Montreal airport is about to open a massive new covered parking garage, to be called P4, not far from the Marriott hotel and it should greatly alleviate any parking problems once it opens in the next month or two.

 

https://www.admtl.com/en/access/parking

 Glad to hear it's not quite as bad as they made it out to be and thank you very much for the link. 

[lx200gps]

19 minutes ago, MillbrookMom said:

 Glad to hear it's not quite as bad as they made it out to be and thank you very much for the link. 

No worries. In addition to monitoring the ADM Parking site for availability, I forgot to mention that they do occasionally offer discounts at certain times of the year. We usually park for 8 days in the big covered garage next to the Terminals. Normal rate is $C320, but a few times I've managed to get it for 20% off.  I got that discount on our trip last October, but for our trip in a few weeks, I had to pay full price.

 

As to traffic and accessing the airport in peak times, I would suggest you start to monitor Google Maps with traffic turned on. The red lines indicating traffic jams leading in to the airport late in the afternoon when all the big aircraft are coming and going to Europe can be very scary, often leading way out on to the two access highways, the 20 and 520. On particularly bad days, passengers have been known to abandon their taxis or Ubers and walk the remaining distance to the terminal. For our next trip, to LA in early Feb, we are stuck with a 17:45 flight, right in the bad period, so we will arrive at the airport before 2PM and sit in the lounge, rather than put up with the traffic. Best of luck.

[MillbrookMom]

14 minutes ago, lx200gps said:

No worries. In addition to monitoring the ADM Parking site for availability, I forgot to mention that they do occasionally offer discounts at certain times of the year. We usually park for 8 days in the big covered garage next to the Terminals. Normal rate is $C320, but a few times I've managed to get it for 20% off.  I got that discount on our trip last October, but for our trip in a few weeks, I had to pay full price.

 

As to traffic and accessing the airport in peak times, I would suggest you start to monitor Google Maps with traffic turned on. The red lines indicating traffic jams leading in to the airport late in the afternoon when all the big aircraft are coming and going to Europe can be very scary, often leading way out on to the two access highways, the 20 and 520. On particularly bad days, passengers have been known to abandon their taxis or Ubers and walk the remaining distance to the terminal. For our next trip, to LA in early Feb, we are stuck with a 17:45 flight, right in the bad period, so we will arrive at the airport before 2PM and sit in the lounge, rather than put up with the traffic. Best of luck.

Thank you.  I will do that, see what traffic is like for the same week day and time.  Then make our decisions based on that.  

[SoloAlaska]

We’ve used park and fly a few times over the last year without any issues. Will be using it again in March on my way to Germany. 

[lx200gps]

8 hours ago, SoloAlaska said:

We’ve used park and fly a few times over the last year without any issues. Will be using it again in March on my way to Germany. 

The remote Park 'N Fly lots just off the airport are definitely a good option to save money if you don't mind waiting for a shuttle bus to the terminal. I just checked the details of our trip in a few weeks, and the PnF lots are asking $189 for the 8 day duration of our trip, whereas we are paying $324 for the covered garage right next to the terminal.

[SoloAlaska]

1 hour ago, lx200gps said:

The remote Park 'N Fly lots just off the airport are definitely a good option to save money if you don't mind waiting for a shuttle bus to the terminal. I just checked the details of our trip in a few weeks, and the PnF lots are asking $189 for the 8 day duration of our trip, whereas we are paying $324 for the covered garage right next to the terminal.

We also get a CAA discount. The wait isn’t usually too long and the service has always been great.

[MillbrookMom]

On 1/18/2024 at 10:17 PM, SoloAlaska said:

We’ve used park and fly a few times over the last year without any issues. Will be using it again in March on my way to Germany. 

 

On 1/19/2024 at 6:50 AM, lx200gps said:

The remote Park 'N Fly lots just off the airport are definitely a good option to save money if you don't mind waiting for a shuttle bus to the terminal. I just checked the details of our trip in a few weeks, and the PnF lots are asking $189 for the 8 day duration of our trip, whereas we are paying $324 for the covered garage right next to the terminal.

We have decided to book a spot in the Park and fly, and can always cancel it if we decide to go a different route.  Got a code that helped lower the price some and we got a deal on our flights so will offset the cost of parking some.

[lx200gps]

23 minutes ago, MillbrookMom said:

 

We have decided to book a spot in the Park and fly, and can always cancel it if we decide to go a different route.  Got a code that helped lower the price some and we got a deal on our flights so will offset the cost of parking some.

Good call. Re my earlier warning about traffic congestion accessing the airport, remember to keep an eye on Google traffic in the weeks preceding your flight to see what the situation is. Late afternoon is the worst. This was a CTV report from last November:

 

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/montreal-airport-moves-to-reduce-car-congestion-after-traffic-backups-1.6656511

[Fouremco]

27 minutes ago, MillbrookMom said:

 

We have decided to book a spot in the Park and fly, and can always cancel it if we decide to go a different route.  Got a code that helped lower the price some and we got a deal on our flights so will offset the cost of parking some.

Good choice. We normally park there when flying out of Montreal and it has always been a positive experience.

 

We've only used the airports parking once, for reasons I don't recall. Upon our return, we headed out to the parking lot only to find the section we'd parked in completely empty and taped off. It turned out that they had decided to re-pave that section, and had towed cars away. It took over 2 hours to determine what was happening and for them to actually figure out where they had left it. Needless to say, we were not impressed, and they were unwilling to offer any form of compensation for the inconvenience. Even an apology would have been nice, but they acted as if it was our fault for having parked there. Never again!

[lx200gps]

22 minutes ago, Fouremco said:

Good choice. We normally park there when flying out of Montreal and it has always been a positive experience.

 

We've only used the airports parking once, for reasons I don't recall. Upon our return, we headed out to the parking lot only to find the section we'd parked in completely empty and taped off. It turned out that they had decided to re-pave that section, and had towed cars away. It took over 2 hours to determine what was happening and for them to actually figure out where they had left it. Needless to say, we were not impressed, and they were unwilling to offer any form of compensation for the inconvenience. Even an apology would have been nice, but they acted as if it was our fault for having parked there. Never again!

I assume that was the covered garage right next to the terminal? That has been under constant construction for a few years now, and part of it has actually been completely dismantled as part of the on-going airport expansion. Yes, it's an absolutely nightmare to use, but we continue to park there as we usually find a spot literally within a few feet of the door to the Transborder terminal. We are anxiously awaiting the opening of the massive new P4 covered garage just down from the Marriott which should open in the next month or two. They will run constant shuttle buses, or it's about a 6 minute walk to the terminal

[Fouremco]

44 minutes ago, lx200gps said:

I assume that was the covered garage right next to the terminal?

No, it was P9, one of their Econoparc lots.