Executives work across continents, and more of them now plan travel around their meetings
October 2, 2026 • Advertorial
Few cities have a closer relationship with air travel than Montreal. The International Civil Aviation Organization and IATA both have their headquarters here, so many of the rules that govern global aviation are drafted a short drive from Westmount. It makes sense that the city’s business community has firm views on how it travels.
Those views are changing. For a generation of Montreal executives, the priority used to be a comfortable flight. Now it is the day that flight produces.
A city whose business lies elsewhere
According to Aéro Montréal, aerospace alone accounts for nearly 15 percent of Quebec’s exports, roughly $15 billion a year, meaning Montreal’s economy looks outward. More than 200 specialized firms operate in the region, from Bombardier and CAE to Airbus and Pratt & Whitney Canada. Their clients, suppliers and regulators are spread across several continents.
The newer industries travel just as much, too. Mila, the AI institute Yoshua Bengio founded in 1993, now brings together more than 140 affiliated professors. It has made Montreal a regular stop for researchers, founders and the investors who follow them. Add the city’s financiers, lawyers and consultants, whose work moves constantly between Toronto, New York, Paris and London, and you have a business class that is often somewhere else.
The typical trip has changed as well. The single-destination trip, out on Monday and back on Thursday, is becoming rare. A more typical week might look like this: a supplier visit in the American Midwest, an investor lunch in Manhattan the next day, and a board meeting back on Sherbrooke Street by Thursday morning.
When the timetable stops cooperating
Montréal-Trudeau does its job well. Tourisme Montréal notes that airlines serve nearly 150 destinations non-stop from YUL year-round, which covers most first legs comfortably. The trouble is the second leg, and the third.
Take a small engineering team that needs half a day at a supplier in Wichita, Kansas. Wichita has a deep aviation heritage but no direct service from Montreal. The commercial route means a connection through a U.S. hub, likely an overnight stay, and a return that eats most of the next working day. Now suppose the same team is expected in New York the following morning. The itinerary soon depends on the least convenient flight.
This is the kind of problem private jet charter is suited to. The aircraft leaves when the team is ready and flies directly between the points that matter. The schedule starts from the meetings, and the flights follow. Three commercial legs across two days can become one continuous working day, with everyone home in time for dinner.
The advantage of smaller airports
The time savings are not only in the air. Private aircraft can use airfields that scheduled carriers largely avoid, and these are often closer to where the meeting is.
Teterboro, in New Jersey, sits about 20 kilometres from Midtown Manhattan and handles a large share of the region’s business flights. Arriving there skips the congestion of the major New York airports. Montreal has a similar option: Saint-Hubert, on the South Shore, is minutes from the Longueuil campus of Pratt & Whitney Canada and a practical alternative to crossing the island to Dorval.
Individually, these gains look small: forty minutes saved on the ground here, a shorter security queue there. Over a week of meetings they add up, and they usually come out of the hours executives value most, early mornings and the evenings they would rather spend at home.
The group itinerary
Private aviation still carries an image of a lone chief executive with a newspaper. In Montreal, this reality increasingly involves teams. A deal team heading to a closing needs to arrive together, briefed and rested. Engineers accompanying a prototype often want it on board with them, not in a cargo hold. A delegation visiting a prospective partner abroad may need to talk candidly during the flight, which is impossible in a crowded business-class cabin.
Once four or five colleagues are travelling, the calculation changes. Booking separate commercial seats, coordinating staggered arrivals and hoping every connection holds can cost more in lost productivity than it saves in fares. With one aircraft and one departure time, the whole team moves at once.
Luxury, redefined by the people who use it
Montreal has never lacked appreciation for the finer things. But its most seasoned travellers talk less about cabin interiors now and more about control: deciding where a meeting happens without checking a timetable first, and being able to accept an invitation from Toronto or Boston at short notice.
Time is the luxury these travellers are buying. In a city that has always done business beyond its borders, that suits them well.
Images: Unsplash
