Air Canada has started work on a new $90-million hangar project at Toronto Pearson Airport to support international expansion at its Toronto global hub.

Once complete, Hangar 5 will accommodate five aircraft at one time in a 127,000-square-foot building under a 77-foot high ceiling. The building will cover an area equal to seven professional hockey rinks.

“We have grown our Toronto operations by more than 50 per cent since 2009,” said Benjamin Smith, president of Passenger Airlines at Air Canada. “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.”

There will be approximately 150 work locations within the hangar office space. 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.

LED lighting will be installed on the interior and exterior of the building, and light will be harvested using sidewall panels that let in exterior light. Other environmentally friendly features include radiant heating and a new high-efficiency hangar door design.

The hangar door consists 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.

Photo courtesy of Air Canada