Montréal Airport

Our flight from Paris was delayed and we would told by the flight attendants to wait at the end of the jetway if we'd missed a flight. The person at the end of the jetway berated us for taking up space and standing around and told us to continue to the terminal. There was no assistance. I was told I would make my flight if I hurried to the customs line - there were well over 150 of us going the same direction and there was one slow and chatty security line. Then we were in front of passport machines with no direction as to how they were to be used. There was no organization to the line and the staff kept shouting to process our passports and wait for our name to show up on the screen. There was chaos and zero organization. It took well over an hour to get through this process. Of course I missed my flight. There was no one at the gate to help re-book. We found the customer service gate and stood in line to be re-booked. That was the only friendly agent. There is no free wifi (I traveled 7 airports in 14 days and this was the only one without wifi) - I had to get my boarding passes printed as they would not accept a digital version. I will pay extra money to never travel through this airport again.

We transited Montreal on our way from Spain to Boston and so had to go through the US customs operation there. What a complete mess! We waited over 1.5 hours in various lines with very unclear instructions from generally very rude personnel. The signs are both unclear and contradictory about where to go for US transit passengers and in most places along the way, there is simply no information available about where to go or what the procedures are. We are Global Entry members and it was of no use whatsoever, even had the GE kiosks been working, which they weren't. A place to avoid.

Have used this airport for departure and arrivals over 20 times. Departures are pretty much what you expect of an airport. Space for large quantities of clients is OK. You don't bump into each other going from baggage drop off to security to customs (for USA). Restaurant choices have improved in the last years but prices are high. Cleanliness is from average to good. The Wi-Fi is on the slow side but its free. Security check does flow and takes around 15 mins outside rush hours. During rush hours its not worse than any US airport. The big hiccup with this airport are the customs on arrival. Over 20 arrivals for me and the management doesn't seem to know how many planes/passengers are coming. You should have seen the shambles when the Air France A380 was still arriving at this airport. They are understaffed and the custom officials are overworked and it shows. The experience lasts around one hour with a Canadian passport or up to two hours with a passport of another country. Once at the booth the agents do a good job they will question you but are efficient. On the positive side you waited at customs for an hour or more so your baggage is waiting for you. Transport In and Out of this airport is almost exclusively by car (taxis or personnel). The car drop off zone is ridiculous. You're fighting your way between cars taxis and buses. Short and long term parking is abundant. A bus service does exist from the airport to downtown Montréal. But if you want to go elsewhere you're better off using a taxi. No train departs directly from the airport. A shuttle exists (when its available) or you can walk to the nearest train station. Between 15-20 min walk outside with minimal indications and minimal pedestrian walk ways. This airport is saturated and cannot grow. It is situated on the island of Montréal with no more available terrain around it.

Flying from Cancun to Boston through Montreal-Trudeau. First of all any connection from one country to the US still requires going through Canadian customs and then going through security again and then US customs. So the process of transferring here is very time consuming. Secondly the airport makes the transfer process as vague and difficult as possible. We encountered a lot of difficulty in figuring out how to make the transfer in terms of either a) getting no information from posted signs about how to proceed and b) getting scolding contradictory information from airport staff about how to proceed through the airport from one flight to another. We were told by Information Services (we called for assistance in the baggage claim area) that we absolutely had to pick up our bags to go through customs then told by Air Canada baggage services that our bags had been sent on directly to Boston and we should proceed without them - then yelled at by the customs officer for not having our luggage with us. Clearly the airport staff in general needs to be far better trained in terms of providing assistance to travelers making connections through this airport. In all if you are making connections from abroad to the US I would not recommend this airport as a point of transfer due to the issues of time lack of clarity as to how to proceed and rudeness of staff.

This is an incredibly confusing airport as the signage is very poor. Found myself walking around in circles trying to get to my gate. The security line was very long and seemed to not be moving. After wondering what the hold up was we realized that ticket checkers were chatting away with relatives of another persons and people lined up behind them unknowingly. Security itself moved very slowly and most of the staff seemed to be having personal conversations with each other. Luckily I had a longer connection but I can't imagine how others would have made the flight.

Access by car is awful. I cannot think of an airport that is worse and it is unlikely to ever change. While they have made improvements (improvements which were torturous for passengers by the way) it does not and will never compare with the spacious Mirabel. I fly regularly to Europe on business and I recall the year in the early 2000's when AC switched from Mirabel to Dorval - it was like going from luxury accommodations to a shack. While it is better than that now there is no room for airport expansion (seems short-sighted) and access by car remains a nightmare. True that the City of Montreal (strangely) pushed for this and financed most of the improvements but I cannot imagine that the residents near Dorval like the noise and congestion. Lastly and generally speaking I have found that security staff at Trudeau-Dorval to be some of the rudest (though there have been a few nice ones over the years). I don't recall ever observing rudeness from security staff at Mirabel and the queuing at Mirabel was much shorter.

Flying from Montreal to Boston we knew we would have to go through the American immigration procedures here and were not looking forward to it at all. The queues were quite short the official was pleasant and efficient and we were competed in a much shorter time than we have previously experienced at American airports. The departure lounge was clean and comfortable but facilities were not extensive. A reasonably pleasant experience.

We are not frequent travellers so we feel we are rookies and are constantly looking around to see where we should go or what we should do. We came home from Vegas on Thurs Sept 18th and discovered we need to use electronic check in of our passport. So we helped each other do this. I was travelling with my husband and Brother and sister-in- law. Once we completed this we were walking through the queue to see what our next step was. My brother and his wife had stopped ahead of us and was speaking with a customs agent and then one of them started just yelling in French which is fine but I did not understand what he was saying or why he was yelling. I could not figure out what I had done wrong. Apparently I was too close to my brother and his wife. He yelled at me that I was invading their privacy! I needed to stay back. He shouted that I should read the signs and be aware of my surroundings at all times etc.

Montreal airport is terrible for US Citizens. I have been to Montreal twice once in 2009 and once yesterday (August 2014). Both times I was sent with no stated reason to a secondary immigration inspection office after waiting in the original immigration line. I am 37 no criminal record I travel all around the world for business and pleasure and never have any problems with immigration except in Montreal. They don't even tell you that you are going to secondary inspection they just act like it's no big deal and send you to a room where you take a number. Well let me tell you I took number 37 and they were on number 14 with only two windows out of 12 open and operating. I was stuck in this airport for probably 2 hours due to the terrible laborious and understaffed immigration procedures. The actual immigration officers were fairly polite it was the wait the understaffed atmosphere and the needless additional screening of hundreds of people at a time that cause this airport to be a disaster and actually really hurt tourism.

Just to let you know that the slow US passport control is called the pre-customs clearance. It is entirely staffed and operated by the United States and Canada doesn't have a word to say about how these operations should be conducted. Therefore these officers are Americans and this pre-customs clearance was imposed on Canadians by Americans and applies to US citizens ans well as citizens of most other countries who travel to the US. I give a score of 1 for queuing times because of that US customs clearance where just last week Canadians were separated from the rest of the world sent to a special section of the waiting line and were imposed a supplementary self- check out with passport-reading machines and for the three hundred of us (or even more) waiting there given only two (very slow) US customs officers for clearance. No need to tell you that many of these Canadian missed their flight. We luckily weren't one of them. I would recommend this airport except if you are going to the United States (especially if you are Canadian).