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Downsview Airport was a long-serving general aviation, military and manufacturing airfield in North York, Toronto, closed to flying in 2024 after nearly a century of use by de Havilland Canada, the Royal Canadian Air Force and Bombardier Aerospace. For the simulator pilot it offers a single long hard runway set amid dense Toronto airspace, with a history stretching from 1929 biplane testing to Dash 8 and Global Express production.
Downsview Airport lay in North York, a district of Toronto, Ontario, and for most of its life was operated first by de Havilland Canada and later by Bombardier Aerospace as an aircraft manufacturing and flight-test field, with an earlier long spell as a Royal Canadian Air Force station. It is of interest to the simulator pilot chiefly as a historic Toronto-area airfield with a single long hard-surfaced runway, closed to aviation in 2024, whose airspace and approach paths sat within the busy Greater Toronto Area alongside Pearson, Buttonville and the Toronto City Centre airports.
The airfield sits in North York, within the Greater Toronto Area, close to several other Toronto-area aerodromes: Buttonville was the nearest public field to the northeast, Toronto City Centre lay to the south near downtown, and the busy Pearson International Airport lay to the west; Oshawa and Brampton also served the wider extremities of the city. Downsview's own operations were subject to prior permission, reflecting its position amid controlled and busy general aviation airspace in the Toronto region.
Downsview had one operational physical runway, 15/33, oriented northwest-southeast, measuring 7,040 feet with a hard surface and runway lighting on both directions. Historically the field also had two further runways, 09/27 (3,164 feet) and 04/22 (4,000 feet), both asphalt, but these had been closed and partly removed or converted to taxiway use, with only 15/33 remaining active before the airport's own closure.
Downsview used the callsign Toronto Terminal for its approach and departure service, on 133.4 MHz. Aerodrome traffic and mandatory frequency (MF) advisory calls, along with UNICOM, were made on 126.2 MHz. There was no instrument landing system at the field.
Toronto's other airfields provide useful reference points for locating Downsview's position within the city: Buttonville lies to the northeast, Toronto City Centre Airport is close to the downtown waterfront to the south, and Pearson International Airport lies to the west; Oshawa and Brampton mark the eastern and western extremities of the wider Toronto flying area.
The airfield opened in 1929 as de Havilland Airfield, established by de Havilland Canada, the Canadian arm of the British aircraft manufacturer, as a general aviation field and aircraft testing site alongside its manufacturing plant, one of only two airports in the area besides what became Pearson. It was greatly expanded as a military installation during the Second World War by the Royal Canadian Air Force and renamed RCAF Station Downsview; the Department of National Defence purchased surrounding land in 1947 to enlarge the base further. The station was renamed Canadian Forces Base Toronto (Downsview) in 1968 and remained a military base until its closure in 1996, after which the property passed to the civilian Crown corporation Parc Downsview Park, which co-managed the airfield with Bombardier Aerospace, successor to de Havilland Canada. The airfield served as a test site for celebrated de Havilland and Avro Canada designs including the Beaver, the Twin Otter and the Dash 8, and later hosted Bombardier's assembly of the Q400, the Global Express and Global 5000, and the wings and wingboxes of the Learjet 45; the Bombardier CSeries also landed there in 2015, though it was assembled in Montreal. Beyond aviation and manufacturing, the airfield hosted the 1984 and 2002 papal visits of Pope John Paul II and the 2003 Molson Canadian Rocks for Toronto concert headlined by the Rolling Stones, staged to help revive the local economy after the SARS outbreak. Bombardier ceased Q400 production at the site in August 2022, and on 11 June 2022 a private event marked de Havilland Canada's farewell after 94 years at the airfield, with historic aircraft arriving and departing for the occasion.
Downsview Airport closed to aviation in April 2024. In its final years of operation, prior permission was required for use of the field, and it remained listed as home base for a small number of pilots. Following Bombardier's 2018 sale of the site to Northcrest Developments (a subsidiary of the Public Sector Pension Investment Board), the airfield and surrounding manufacturing lands are being redeveloped into a large mixed-use community, unveiled in August 2024 under the identity YZD, drawing on the airport's former callsign; there is no current flying activity or facilities for pilots at the site.
