Home to around 6,000 people, the archipelago of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon is 2,650 miles and five hours’ flight time from Paris, but that doesn’t make it any less French. Sebastian Schmitz visits the two largest islands to understand the essential role aviation plays in this tiny outpost
Located off the Newfoundland coast in the Atlantic Ocean, the archipelago of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon consists of eight islands, of which just two are inhabited. It is one of several French overseas collectivities that include French Polynesia and the Caribbean islands of Saint Martin and Saint Barthélemy. Saint-Pierre, the archipelago’s largest town, has a population of around 5,500 and shares its name with the islandon which it is situated. It hosts the islands’ major hotels, schools, hospital and administrative buildings, although everything is tailored to the modest number of inhabitants, and the town is famous for its colourful wooden houses. While hosting a population of just 600, the island of Miquelon is more than eight times bigger than Saint-Pierre, which lies just 3.6 miles to the south.
For centuries, fishing has been and remains an important source of revenue for the islands, in part necessitated by the rocky ground and harsh climate which make farming difficult. The islands are also popular with philatelists as, despite being part of France, they issue their own stamps.
Given their remoteness, flying is not only the easiest way of reaching the islands but travelling between them. Two airports cater to the islands’ needs and the larger of the two facilities, on Saint-Pierre, even boasted a direct link to Paris during summer 2018. This link had been due to resume this summer, but was subsequently cancelled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Saint-Pierre Airport
The archipelago’s primary gateway is just walking distance from the town centre and a relatively recent addition. It was opened on September 7, 1999 by former French president Jacques Chirac.
Its predecessor had opened in 1965 and ran along the southern edge of the harbour basin. While very convenient, there was precious little space at either end of the 4,100ft-runway, meaning it was unsuitable even for turboprops, let alone jets. The terminal building was just as small and was another factor for building a new airport. The older airfield is still partly intact today and is easily recognised from the air even though houses and hotels have since been built on the site.
From the opening of the 1960s facility to the present day, the archipelago has had its own airline, Air Saint-Pierre. The company’s bread-and-butter work is maintaining links between the two main islands as well as providing essential connections to nearby Canada, including the cities of Halifax, Saint John’s, Montréal and Moncton.
Air Saint-Pierre initially began operations with a Douglas DC-3 leased from Eastern Provincial Airways, before purchasing a Piper PA-23 Aztec. Since then, it has operated an interesting mix of types including the Beechcraft 18 and Hawker Siddeley HS 748. It currently flies an ATR 42 and a Reims-Cessna F406 Caravan II.
The new airport, which occupies the southeastern part of the island, is a great improvement over the existing facility. It offers a single, 5,900ft-runway that runs roughly in parallel with the coastline. Four buildings – comprising the Air Saint-Pierre hangar, a maintenance building for ground equipment, an administration building and the terminal – are situated to the runway’s north. The two-storey, 24,000sq ft passenger terminal features a glass façade and an arched roof. As you enter the building, you reach the check-in area used by the airport’s sole tenant which operates just a handful of rotations each day. Once checked in, passengers proceed to the boarding lounge before walking the few short feet to the aircraft once it is ready for boarding. Arriving at Saint-Pierre is similarly effortless as there are only short distances to walk. The baggage carousel and immigration counter – for those travelling from Canada – are in one big room and, upon exiting, passengers find themselves in the terminal’s main hall. From there, you can catch a taxi into the town centre or elsewhere on the island, unless you fancy a walk.
All routes from Saint-Pierre are flown by the resident airline’s ATR 42-500, F-OFSP (c/n 801), and Reims-Cessna 406, F-OSPJ (c/n F406-0091). As it fields just two aircraft with a combined capacity of 55 passengers, they are not overly busy. There are currently three links to Canadian cities, with the busiest being to Halifax, Nova Scotia, flown four times weekly. St John’s, Newfoundland is linked thrice weekly, while two rotations serve Montréal, offering onward connections to Paris.
Transatlantic ambitions
The 1999-built airport was constructed with the possibility – or rather, hope – of a direct flight to France. Initially, the closest the facility got to realising this ambition was a series of Icelandair Boeing 737 charters to Keflavík. As Saint-Pierre’s runway can handle aircraft no larger than a 737 – and a weight restricted one at that – the choice of airlines that could connect the archipelago with Paris was quite small. Eventually, a solution was found and, almost 20 years after the airport first opened, ASL Airlines France began flights from Paris/Charles de Gaulle in summer 2018 using a 737-700. In the first year, eight rotations were operated, increasing to 12 in 2019. It isn’t known how many connections were planned for 2020, as the charter programme had to be abandoned due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Parisian links were operated under the full commercial responsibility of Air Saint-Pierre. Inbound flights would arrive at Saint-Pierre in the evening, with both the aircraft and its crew staying for the night before returning to Europe the following afternoon. The services were of immense value to both the airport and the community as, in 2018 and 2019, all flights were fully booked.
While the transatlantic route is likely to return for 2021 – COVID-19 permitting – there is simply not enough demand to sustain a year-round scheduled rotation. The vast majority of those using the ASL Airlines France service are members of the local population, going to France for their summer holidays.
As such, the Canadian connections are an important lifeline during the ten months when 737s aren’t crossing the Atlantic – not only for passengers, but also for cargo and mail. On the author’s flight from Halifax to Saint-Pierre, some 20 or so seats of the ATR 42 turboprop were occupied by mail bags.
One other seasonal route, which was introduced in 2019, connected Saint-Pierre and Miquelon with another archipelago: Canada’s Magdalen Islands (located in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, it falls under the Province of Quebec), and lie west of Newfoundland. Inhabitants from the two regions share strong cultural and family ties, so they like to visit whenever they can. The direct flight was convenient, but has also been cancelled for the 2020 season.
However, the busiest route by far, with four round trips each weekday and three on Saturdays, is the 15-minute hop from Saint-Pierre to Miquelon with a direct flight distance of roughly 25 miles.
Miquelon Airport
As with its bustling neighbour, the largest town on Miquelon shares its name with said island. Its little airfield sits just outside the town on the island’s northern edge. Bordered to the south by a lake, the Grand Étang de Miquelon, the airfield’s primary function is to provide a link with Saint-Pierre. While a ferry also connects the two islands on a regular basis, it is often affected by poor weather and rough seas, regularly leading to delays or even cancellations.
The 15-minute flight is much more convenient and subsidised one-way fares of €17.50 or €29 return add to the service’s popularity. The Reims-Cessna 406 makes four connections each weekday with a reduced frequency on Saturdays and no flights on Sundays. Save for the occasional general aviation visitor, these flights are the only movements the airport typically handles.
A small terminal is dwarfed by a much larger maintenance facility which houses the airport’s fire tender as well as other ground handling equipment. Given the site's diminutive size and sole domestic service, things are very casual, almost like catching a bus. Passengers show up just minutes before the departure time, breeze through check-in and are escorted to the Cessna by one of its two pilots. After a quarter-of-an-hour and what is a very scenic flight at low level over the coastlines of Miquelon and Saint-Pierre, you arrive at the larger of the archipelago’s two gateways, which feels massive in comparison.
Miquelon’s modest infrastructure and single 3,280ft-runway are perfectly up to the task and, with a maximum of just four rotations a day, there is little risk of straining the facility's capacity. Unusually – and in an act of patriotism – the two airports have been allocated
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) codes beginning with the letter ‘L’, usually reserved for airports in France, Italy and southern Europe. Traditionally, most ICAO codes correspond with a geographic location, so it would be expected that Saint-Pierre and Miquelon’s airports would have been allocated codes beginning with ‘C’, as is the case for licenced airfields in Canada. Despite this, the four-letter ICAO identifiers for the airfields are LFVP and LFVM, respectively.
As so often on quite remote islands, airports are of crucial importance for the inhabitants and the local economy. As such, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon are no exception, and even though the larger of the two only recorded 36,874 passengers in 2018, it is probably the most crucial piece of infrastructure on the islands. As far as future developments are concerned, neither massive growth nor a plunge in passenger numbers look to be on the cards as both have found their respective roles and passenger figures have remained quite stable over the years. The only growth factor is the potential for an increased number of flights to Paris, but this is unlikely to rise much above the levels experienced during 2019.
For anyone looking for a destination a bit out of the ordinary, a visit to the islands is highly recommended and best during the summer months.
