TORONTO—Air Canada broke ground on a new $90-million aircraft hangar project at Toronto’s Pearson airport Sept. 22.
Once complete, the new Hangar 5 building will support the airline’s ongoing expansion of its Toronto global hub. It will cover an area equal to seven professional hockey rinks and accommodate five aircrafts at one time, a release indicates.
Benjamin Smith, president of passenger airlines at Air Canada, said in a statement that Toronto operations have grown by more than 50 per cent since 2009.
"This building, our second major construction project in the Greater Toronto Area following the opening of a new $60-million operations centre in Brampton in 2013, will support Air Canada’s future growth by giving us state-of-the-art maintenance, storage and training facilities in an environmentally friendly structure," added Smith.
Once complete in April 2018, Hangar 5 will cover more than 127,000 square feet under a 77-foot-high ceiling formed by the largest uninterrupted commercial hangar span in Canada, adds the release. At capacity, it will be able to accommodate up to three wide-body and two narrow-body aircrafts.
Other components of the new hangar include, environmentally friendly features such as LED lighting on the interior and exterior of the building, "light harvesting" using sidewall panels that will let in exterior light, radiant heating, and a new high-efficiency hangar door design.
The hangar door will consist of six leaves, each approximately 75 feet high and wide, that open at the rate of 60 feet per minute.
The door will feature an iris, which is an aperture that allows part of the aircraft fuselage to protrude outside the hangar with the remainder of the aircraft inside the hangar when the door is closed. The iris optimizes the use of space by allowing placement of a third wide-body aircraft in the facility and increases the building’s overall energy efficiency.
There will be approximately 150 work locations within the hangar office space area. On the floor, there will be five separate aircraft positions where technicians and storekeepers will work. The hangar also has multiple training classrooms able to accommodate 200 people and a cafeteria for 100 people.
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