Toronto Pearson Airport

✅ Trip Verified | I had to transfer planes in Toronto on my latest trip to Tampa. The worst experience in an airport ever. There is confusion everywhere, there is no flow to anything. It was unorganized and messy. Signage is confusing and inadequate and you have to guess and hope you’re going the right way. Throughout the airport I was seeing confused faces and passengers trying to help each other figure out where to go. The lines are long and slow, especially to get through security screening. The gates are excessively far from one another. I had to get to B1A which took me a good 20 minutes (I’m a young male with a steady pace). Once you get to your gate, there is no place to sit. Waiting areas are crowded, stuffy and noisy. I’m giving a 2 on staff only because I found one gentleman that was smiling and helpful. All others were rude and obnoxious. I will avoid traveling through YYZ at all cost. Get it together, I’ve been to much larger airports which handled crowds almost with ease. This was appalling.

✅ Trip Verified | Worst airport experience ever. Car rental return signs are almost non-existent, I had to circle the airport for half an hour to return my rental. Gates are extremely far apart. It was a 20-30 walk from after security to my gate B2c which was unexpected. Food choices are terrible. I had the worst burrito bowl of my life at a certain store before security. Security screening was unorganized and messy. There were not enough security bins and many people's laptops had to undergo additional screening. Overall, reconsider flying out from this airport or budget a generous amount of time for traveling around the airport.

✅ Trip Verified | We had a horrific experience at Pearson yesterday, returning from Paris, and on our way back home to Rochester, NY. Extremely long lines at immigration/customs, non-functional kiosks at the express immigration area, appallingly rude personnel at kiosks (truly, the absolute worst attitude I have encountered anywhere). Overall chaos (many different lines with no signs, hundreds of frustrated passengers running around looking for the correct lines, very few and misinformed airport representatives), a one-hour wait to claim our bags, etc. I asked an airline representative at the baggage claim area if this sort of chaos was normal, or the product of a one-time issue, and her response was: "this is one of the largest airports in the world (or isn't at all!), so this is to be expected". I have been in airports in Europe, South America, the US, and Asia, so I know what handling large-volume travel can be, and Toronto is the worst I have seen anywhere. We spent one more hour waiting for our off-airport parking shuttle ("Park n Fly") bus to arrive, and 30 minutes waiting in line to leave the lot (again, malfunctioning kiosks, and one very overwhelmed person handling everything). We will never again fly to this airport.

❎ Not Verified | Unfortunately I have had another experience at Pearson International Airport that left us frustrated and disappointed with the lack of professionalism and organization. We landed at terminal 3 approx 45 minutes behind schedule only to have to wait another 20 minutes sitting on the tarmac when the pilot instructed everyone to sit back down again because we were 10 ft short of where the plane needed and required ground assistance to move up. It took another 20 minutes before the doors were finally open and we could actually deplane - customs was very busy but organized - but unfortunately the baggage claim area was crowded and very disorganized. We were told to go one carousel and we waited a half hour before some luggage appeared - but then the carousel shut down. We waited another hour before an announcement redirected us to a different carousel and we waited there for another 30 minutes before our luggage appeared and then had to get into another line to exit and hand in our declaration. Toronto is a first class city yet falls short in providing an airport experience that is professional, organized and customer service oriented. Smaller airports can successfully process large groups of people with efficiency and courtesy - it’s time to improve your organizational systems and provide meaningful communication to the traveller if/when systems break down. Landing at Pearson is often a travellers first impression of a great city - and Pearson Airport is often failing at make a good first impression.

❎ Not Verified | I got off the the aircraft aware that I needed to use a restroom since, like many men of my age, I have an enlarged prostate. I was confident that there would be a facility between before Customs. There wasn't. At Customs, I asked for the nearest facility and was drected to a tiny facility with a long line-up of men in a similar state to my own. Absolutely disgraceful.

✅ Trip Verified | We travelled from Italy to Canada via Frankfurt, one of the busiest airports in Europe. Our experience in Frankfurt, a well organized airport that handles great volumes of passengers with seeming ease, was a stark contrast to the appalling situation we found at Pearson International in Toronto. Apart from having to walk for miles between terminals, the mass confusion that we encountered in more or less having to process ourselves through customs and trying to make our connecting flight was atrocious. Hundreds of passengers were forced to negotiate multiple labyrinth-like customs and security lineups that resembled drunken conga-lines at a bad New Years dance. It was mayhem and there were insufficient staff to assist travellers, particularly at electronic customs kiosks. As a Canadian who has had positive experiences in airports in Germany, France, Spain, England and Italy, I was embarrassed at what foreign travellers must have made of their experience at Pearson. I would avoid if at all possible. Trudeau Airport in Montreal is much, much better designed and managed.

❎ Not Verified | It was overall good, but I would say now that the security was tight but since I had NEXUS it was faster than normal security. At each gate there are tables with iPads able to order food from the restaurant at participating gates in the airport. The iPads also let you browse the internet, and other cool stuff. If you live in Toronto I recommend choosing this airport than the other ones in the area.

✅ Trip Verified | I landed at Toronto Pearson International Airport on 25th April, 2018 from Atlanta, US. Right after I got out of the aircraft there was a long line to even get to the passport scanning section. My turn came after 30 mins of waiting. Then I was asked to go to the immigration area where there were about 150 people ahead of me and only 4 immigration officers processing immigration for all these people. I had to wait in line for 3 hours for my turn to come. It was ridiculous. People missed their flights because of this stupidity and madness. I have travelled across the world and have never experienced this kind of slow immigration anywhere in the world (not even third world countries like India where I come from) even there you are pretty much done in about 20-30 mins tops. One would expect Toronto airport to be more efficient and faster but this was by far my worst experience ever. Elderly and children suffered the most. Wouldn’t recommend anyone to enter Canada through Toronto airport. Come to US and then enter via road.

✅ Trip Verified | Arrived in Toronto from Warsaw on time at 20.20 pm on April 24 2018. After leaving the plane we were held in the queue for 30 minutes before we were allowed to go downstairs to have a travel card and passport checked. Needless to say the customs area was a complete mess and a bottle neck. We had to walk in a the circle for one and a half hours, this was extremely tiring and frustrating that the airport authority could not provide an adequate number of custom officers to clear the resident line faster. There were only four officers on duty. I saw exhausted elderly people and mothers with children, this is not acceptable for our country and something must be done by address the situation like this in the future.

✅ Trip Verified | Arrived at arrivals with Air Canada on the 17th of April at 7:30 p.m. Upon entering arrivals I was overwhelmed to see the entire room packed with people. It was so bad that people were even backed up outside the entry doors. When a security guard was asked how long this would take, he replied more than 40 minutes. It took us at least that long just to wind are we through the multiple passages created just to get to the arrival machines. Customs officers we're even standing outside of their gates in attempt to look at documents and pass people through. Screening was a joke! What I saw made Canada look worse than a third world country. The only excuses I heard was that they had a snowstorm in the last 3 days. This is no excuse! Our departure on the 11th was little better as we spent at least an hour trying to get through to US Customs. Pearson is one of the most expensive airports in the world for Airlines to land and take-off from and the service is a joke. This Airport must be modernized to have the ability to move people in an efficient and Humane manner. The few staff that were there did the best but due to the massive number of travellers, they ineffective.