Vancouver Airport

Not Verified | Worst airport for international transit. Understaffed, slow at customs and securities. A lot of difficult procedures. Someone took our baggage out and airport is almost of no help to coordinate or provide a solution.

✅ Trip Verified | Difficult to find where to check in unless you are flying within Canada or to the US. Needs labelled zones and active screens as at most major airports. Going through US immigration at the airport is a great boon. Quick and uncongested when I did it. Strange thing was, though, that you had your photo and fingerprints taken at an automatic gate and then had to go to a uniformed US immigration officer to have the same process repeated.

Not Verified | The staff at every outlet and service are inept and extremely slow. Wait, wait, wait for everything. Starbucks being the worst and out of basic ingredients when you finally get to order. How does a mega chain with minimal items run out of menu items. Despicable, deplorable, painful airport.

✅ Trip Verified | Parking at this airport is a nightmare. Construction everywhere and very poor signage. It has always been the case with the poor signage but now with the construction it is worse. Parking attendants told me this week that they get constant complaints from people about the poor signage and as a result of confusion and the stress of missing flight check in times people are often end up in the highest priced daily parking area. I did speak to three different people about this and here is the response I received: "I spoke with my Manager and she advised there is plenty of additional signage in advance of the airport, prior to the construction areas, which directs people to the VLT (Value Long Term), as well as the jetSet lot, as well as signage directing people to turn for additional parking options." Shamefully poor response. The rest of the services are good but parking and signage, and management response was horrible .

✅ Trip Verified | Twice transited with Air Canada which has its own terminal. Being Australian my baggage was checked through to my final Canadian destination. No immigration/customs forms were given on the plane. No need. There was quite a lot of walking involved to get to immigration, on the way I met a green coated volunteer who kindly told me what to do and the gate of my next flight at 10am (landed 7am). At immigration there are a series of machines where you scan your passport and answer questions. At the end a piece of paper with my picture came out. I showed the lady at the immigration desk area who directed me to the right. Just one person before me, a few questions asked and then I was in, There is a lift to the left that goes up to domestic. There the security people were very impatient that visitors didn’t know their ways (ie you put even your carry on in a bin). After that experience I found the unremarkable lounge (worst ever experienced) being crowded, dirty toilets and little to offer. Returning was odd, arrived on the same plane that would take us to Sydney however we had to walk down a long passage to come all the way back to the same gate. Odd. All in all an attractive airport that seems to prioritise it’s attractive displays over functionality,

Not Verified | My wife and I are senior citizens and had some heavy luggage, and decided to use a Red Cap for $10.00. Our red cap was outstanding. Our bags were overweight and we would have to pay $100, but helped us repack our luggage and saved us the penalty. It was well worth the $10.00, and unfortunately I only had $2.00 cash for an extra tip.

Not Verified | My family has US Global Entry, but both machines were out of service. Luckily, there was no line. However, once we got into US customs, we had to wait for our bags to be scanned. Although, there were only a couple dozen people waiting, that queue quickly grew to around 200 people. My wife's bag didn't clear until 100 minutes later and we missed our flight. Mind you, we'd just spent 10+ hours on a flight back from China. Now, we won't get back home until tomorrow morning and have to add another segment. The entire time, the agents said they couldn't do anything and tried to blame Air Canada. The airline blamed customs new scanning system and mentioned there have been problems for the past few days. We then waited for over an hour to inquire about rebooking our flight. There were only 2 people ahead of us. I don't know what to believe, but know this. We will avoid flights through Canada in the future and will avoid using Air Canada again. They are friendly, but inefficient. Hopefully, they can get their act together and not ruin anyone else's vacation.

Not Verified | I can say that by far the security at the airport is the worst I have ever been through. My flight coming in from Europe was delayed so I was already running late for my flight and waiting for 45 minutes in a security line where there is about 100 people and only one security lane open is ridiculous. Some of the staff were nice but others were not considerate of time and told me “oh well.” Perhaps this was just a one time mistake but in all my experience was not ideal, at all.

✅ Trip Verified | I love Vancouver airport. Also, It’s my home base. However, security on gate C is a nightmare pretty much all the time. There are only one or two lines open, while people in line waiting outside of the security room. Then, the staff takes pretty much anything that can they are not familiar with. Last time they took my screwdriver expended (length of the credit card), today they took my network cable crimping tool (couldn’t explain why). When I asked, they said I can go back and recheck. “Sir, you have two options: leave it here or recheck”. Mind you, I’ve been traveling with the tools all over Canada for many years and passed the security numerous times even thru the same airport. I would go and recheck my tools if I didn’t have to stay in the long line again. Quite upsetting to be honest with you.

✅ Trip Verified | This was the return from hell. I had requested wheelchair assistance, which I really needed. Dragging luggage around the airport was no help. Not only was there no assistance, no one knew anything, not the Royal Mounted Canadian Police nor any of the personnel assigned to help travelers. Boarding passes were never emailed to my phone because I had asked for assistance. My husband and I traipsed from one end of the huge building to the other and back again. I put our information into one of the kiosks and got luggage tags for the bags. However, we were on the wrong line to drop the luggage because we were following instructions that a clueless airline representative had given us. We went to the other end of the building once more and met with the Cathay Pacific representative. She refused to take the bags until 8pm. It was noon. I needed to charge my phone. There are stands—literally—with no seats and plugs on the floor, only one of which work, so I was bent in half trying to get the charger into the 110 volt receptacle. I wanted to tell my husband where I was and asked the first misinformation woman to keep an eye on the phone for a couple of minutes since he was sitting in the food court with the baggage. She refused and told me that people come to the airport to steal phones and chargers, so I was stuck guarding it for more than an hour. When we finally dropped off our bags, we needed to go through security with very aggressive officers who made us take off our shoes despite the fact that we are in our 70s, scanned and wiped down our canes, poked me in the front and back of the knee that had a replacement when I explained it would set off the sensor, and went through all our jewelry in the carry-on luggage. To add insult to injury, we denied a ride on several empty golf carts to our gate. Access to the toilets was closed off at the gate necessitating a walk of 1/4 mile to another rest room. No consideration was extended for us as elderly and disabled passengers.