Toronto Pearson Airport

Customer Reviews

No Skytrax Rating
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Queuing Times 12345
Food Beverages 12345
Airport Staff 12345
Customer rating from 631 reviews
3/10
No Skytrax Rating
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6/10

"It falls short"

(Canada)

Unverified | Expedited Customs when arriving from the US, and doing a domestic connection in Canada. It falls short! Great idea, very efficient pass through customs, what a great idea! Except it's ruined by forcing D-gate (domestic connections) travellers onto a bus that sits there for 15 minutes and after this big delay, the bus only drives 100m! Why would they do this! Just make it so that people have the option to walk it, it would take 60 seconds.
Experience At AirportArrival Only
Date VisitNovember 2017
Type Of TravellerBusiness
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages N/A
Wifi Connectivity 12345
yes
10/10

"baggage handlers are just incompetent"

(United States)

Unverified | Just had the worst airport experience in over 40 years of traveling at Toronto Pearson. Been waiting over 2 hours for my bags so I can clear customs. The bags are here, they know where they are, but they can't get them delivered to baggage claim. It's not too busy, their baggage handlers are just incompetent. Don't fly through here if you can avoid it.
Experience At AirportDeparture Only
Date VisitOctober 2017
Type Of TravellerSolo Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages N/A
Airport Staff 12345
no
2/10

"Why not spread the machines out"

(Canada)

Unverified | The Customs hall at Pearson Terminal 3 is the most useless exercise in pointless automation that I have ever seen. Imagine two or three international flights worth of tired passengers being herded into what they think is Customs, but instead turns out to be a huge meandering line up to electronically fill out Declaration forms that they have already filled out on the plane anyway. This is all guided by a bunch of people who seem to have only just been trained or just started doing this job (though I'm told this room has been like this for a few years now). After waiting in line for what feels like forever you are sent over to one of these computers that scans your passport and takes you picture. Finally you finish filling out the electronic declaration form. Then you realize that you have to get into another line, just as long as the first, to get to an actual Customs Agent. This takes just as long as the first line. I realize that the whole procedure is to try and improve things for Customs and The Agents but this isn't the way to do it. Why not spread the machines out along the couple of miles of hallways between the Gates and the Customs Hall? And also, tell the airlines they don't need to hand out the old forms anymore.
Experience At AirportArrival Only
Date VisitNovember 2017
Type Of TravellerSolo Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages N/A
Wifi Connectivity 12345
Airport Staff 12345
no
1/10

"Staff unhelpful and surly"

(United Kingdom)

Verified Review | Staff unhelpful and surly. Long session at a computer terminal despite having an ETA and completing a form on the plane. Question about misleading signage just ignored. Have looked at many reviews about this airport on the internet and they are universally bad going back ten years or more, so Canada clearly does not care about the impression it gives its visitors. I was on holiday, but a friend who was on business a few weeks ago was agressively asked why a Canadian could not do the same job. Ths fact that he was contracted to do a specialised job by a Canadian company made no difference. They just seem to want to make people disike Canada for no sensible reason. The actual residents of Toronto were perfecly fine and are being very badly let down by their compatriots at the airport. It must be deliberate since they have done nothing about it. I have travelled widely and nothing compares to Canada. Such a shame. Never again.
Experience At AirportArrival Only
Date VisitSeptember 2017
Type Of TravellerCouple Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages N/A
Airport Staff 12345
no
1/10

"uncoordinated, disrespectful staff"

(Canada)

Verified Review | On October 13 we returned to Canada from Montego Bay, Jamaica with arrival at 7:15 pm and connecting flight to Winnipeg at 9:30 pm. We were immediately funnelled towards 2 flights of stairs and a non-operational escalator, with no visible signs of an elevator. At the top of the stairs we were confronted with a snaking line of people back and forth, approximately 300 deep. This was to use new customs kiosks where you enter your passport (not all machines accepting the passports properly), have a facial photograph taken and issued a "receipt". This lineup was timed and took 40 minutes to reach the kiosk. Then we were ushered into a 2nd hall of approximately 500 people snaking back and forth in a state of chaos with people upset about connections and insufficient, uncoordinated, disrespectful staff, some with poor grasp of English. After flagging down an unhelpful staff person we just jumped lines and eventually got to the ticket booth where the customs agent just said "go". What the point of that 40 minute line was is unclear. We were then stampeded to the baggage carousels and herded along to the exit with verbal directions someone in our party heard, to go left and then take an escalator. There did not seem to be any clear signage. At no point in the baggage area or the long queue to drop off the bags again, were signs visible to remind international passengers to put their duty free liquids in the bags to be rechecked or they would be confiscated. Nor was there time to think of this, as the place was mayhem. We proceeded directly to the security area, with our duty free bag, where another huge line up was ahead of us. With now less than 15 or 20 minutes to get to the gate for departure the security people were abusive of their authoritarian position, deliberately slow, confiscated our duty free purchases in a haughty manner and didn't have courtesy to say sorry. If I didn't know this was Canada, I would have said I was in an Orwellian state. My husband, age 66, ran to the airline gate. At 65, with a sore back I could not run. I still had not had a moment in this unbelievable scenario to go to the washroom. The first time I saw a washroom sign was just by the airport departure gate. I and another late family were the last to board the plane within 5 minutes of departure. 2 hours 15 minutes between flights should have been plenty, instead the couple we were travelling with would have missed their connecting flight if not for a delay at the airline end. When one comes off a flight of 4 hours to an airport and has to clear customs and make another connection, one should not be treated worse than a stray dog. This is how I was made to feel. I for one, will never be foolish enough to plan a trip going through this poorly managed, poorly signed, airport with staff who have not been informed that the flying public are paying a good price and should be treated with some civility.
Experience At AirportTransit
Date VisitOctober 2017
Type Of TravellerCouple Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages N/A
Airport Staff 12345
no
4/10

"careless of customer service"

(United Kingdom)

Unverified | We visit Toronto regularly. Last year we arrived at 18.00, cleared customs / immigration within 15 minutes, then had to wait 50 minutes for baggage to appear on the carousel. When departing two weeks later there were continual changes to the boarding gates. October 2017, same problem with baggage taking 40 minutes after clearing immigration to arrive at carousel. Much worse when departing on flight AC 848. Gate was changed from E77 to E74, but a flight to Rome was at gate E75, so AC848 could not approach gate E74 until the Rome flight had departed, which was 20 minutes after AC848 was scheduled to depart. Further short delay until AC848 arrived at gate, flight crew then boarded to make operational and safety checks (why couldn't they have boarded the aircraft earlier to do these tasks?) and passengers loaded soon after. Actually pushed back from gate 54 minutes later than scheduled departure time. There was a further hour delay due to mechanical failure on taxiway, but this not the airport's fault. It is obvious that at Pearson Airport there is an appallingly low standard of customer service skills, either because the airport staff don't care or, more probably, because the management is careless of customer service or has zero competence in customer service skills. Also, there seems to be little or no effort to learn from their mistakes. Perhaps they all should be reminded that customers made angry by bad service will vote with their feet and never return.
Experience At AirportArrival and Departure
Date VisitOctober 2017
Type Of TravellerCouple Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages 12345
Airport Shopping 12345
Airport Staff 12345
no
6/10

"not the best terminal I have used"

(United Kingdom)

Unverified | Terminal 3 at YYZ is not the best terminal I have used, I much prefer Terminal 1. Upon arrival into T3 from a BA flight we went straight to immigration where the queue looked larger than it was, and we were through after 15/20 minutes, although we were sat toward the back of the airplane and another international flight had landed. The bag claim area has an extremely low ceiling which causes some uncomfort, and then exiting into the arrivals area, there are so many people about. The access to the UP Express is still convenient and tickets are available for purchase just down the hall. Departing is not a great experience either. The signage is easy to understand, and finding out where to go is fine, however security took thirty minutes at a time which 'wasn't busy'. The choice of shops and restaurants lacks, with a few news stores and coffee shops. I would happily fly from T3 again.
Experience At AirportArrival and Departure
Date VisitOctober 2017
Type Of TravellerFamily Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages 12345
Airport Shopping 12345
Wifi Connectivity 12345
Airport Staff 12345
yes
2/10

"incompetent and arrogant staff members"

(Italy)

Verified Review | Entire airport is very poorly organized, very impolite employees and signs not clear. Even if the structure / building is nice all the rest is just poor. The check in process as well as the security check is just insane, lots of incompetent and arrogant staff members who do not know their job and slow everything down. Forget this airport!
Experience At AirportTransit
Date VisitSeptember 2017
Type Of TravellerBusiness
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages N/A
Wifi Connectivity 12345
Airport Staff 12345
no
3/10

"entire airport just felt poorly organized"

(Canada)

Unverified | Definitely not the greatest airport in the world, especially the check-in area. The line-ups are huge and the entire space is not very well organized. A struggle for us was the luggage drop-off zone. Everything was supposed to be automatic but there were constant problems with the boarding pass reader, then with the bag weighing mechanism that kept rejecting our bags. One of the error messages we received from the luggage weighing computer is that our bag was too light (it was a fully packed huge bag!). The airport staff were trying to help but there were just too few of them around and the crowds are big. Just as our bags were disappearing the lady who was helping us noticed that we didn't have a special "airport sorting" tag on them. Somebody was supposed to give them to us but they didn't and because of that our bags would not be sorted automatically and somebody would have to manually put them in the correct bin, but since some workers were on strike they may not be willing to do it! The bags were gone and there was no way to return them. We asked if that meant that we may not get our bags at our destination airport to which she responded "let's hope for the best!". Nice start to a trip! The security checks were reasonably quick but again everything is not very well organized. The shopping/restaurant area behind the security checks were OK but nothing at all special. The entire airport just felt poorly organized and not very clean.
Experience At AirportDeparture Only
Date VisitAugust 2017
Type Of TravellerCouple Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages 12345
Airport Shopping 12345
Airport Staff 12345
no
3/10

"airport halls were drab and the bathrooms dirty"

(United Kingdom)

Verified Review | I am a Canadian who has lived abroad for many years, My wife and I used Toronto Pearson airport for our return flight on BA to London on Sept 17. It was our first time using Pearson and alas it was the worst experience involving a long-haul flight from a Western airport in 35+ years of air travel. First, the airport was difficult to track down in Mississaugas vortex of high-rises and spaghetti highways, even with our hire car's GPS, because of poor (sometimes non-existent) signage that forced us to make decisions within seconds amidst careening traffic to take this or that lane or turn-off. Second, the airport halls were drab and the bathrooms dirty. Third, there were almost no duty-free shops of interest, food was mediocre at best (only options were salt-laden fast food), and the shop and restaurant staff indifferent, sluggish and even rude, and some scarcely spoke English - all surprising for an airport serving a city as huge and international as Toronto. Security staff screening baggage were brusque and terse towards passengers as we were being processed. But, strangely, no one except airline staff checked our passports and boarding cards en route to our plane. Immigration/customs personnel who check/stamp passports in any other airport we've used were nowhere to be seen, and neither was a single uniformed police officer - all of which raised doubts in our mind whether passengers are adequately monitored at Pearson, a serious issue in this age of terrorist threats in public places. To top off our dismal experience, our plane was forced to wait at its docking position for more than an hour after passengers took their seats because of what the pilot said was a problem loading hold luggage. "Everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong," the pilot told passengers over the intercom by way of explanation. All in all, Pearson airport does a disservice to Toronto's image as a vibrant international business and cultural centre and needs to get its act together for my wife and I to ever use it again.
Experience At AirportDeparture Only
Date VisitSeptember 2017
Type Of TravellerCouple Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages 12345
Airport Shopping 12345
Wifi Connectivity 12345
Airport Staff 12345
no