Toronto Pearson Airport

✅ 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.

✅ Verified Review | Toronto Pearson Terminal 3 international arrivals is awful. Tiny, dark, low-ceiling arrrivals hall crammed with reader kiosks and completely inadequate signage. This is a dump with passport and Nexus kiosks that don't work and signs that mis-direct arrivals into wrong lines. The baggage hall is even worse. After travelling throughout Africa, Asia etc this had to be the worst! Unbelievable.

✅ Verified Review | This airport is absolutely ridiculous. It's a disgrace in every possible way. Seating areas are inefficient making is hard to find a chair. Food is miserable and overpriced. Terminal 3 capacity is too small to handle the number of passengers making it a very crowded area with people hunting for a place to sit and walkways blocked by people queuing for boarding. The terminal smells greasy from all the open kitchen restaurants. It's a truly horrible experience. Avoid his airport if you have a choice. This airport is not built or managed with the traveler in mind. Internet/wifi is terrible.

✅ Verified Review | Impossible to find a sit down restaurant in B terminal, only grab and go except for Corso. Overpriced fake "gourmet" food, don't waste your money go to Timmies or Starbucks instead. Even the smaller airports have a Chillies, or some other kind of chain that you can actually sit down and be served at, important after getting up at 6.30 am, not getting breakfast because your hotel couldn't get it together, and then finding out your 4 hour layover in Toronto is now 5 1/2 hours. Dissapointed to say the least.

✅ Verified Review | Worst service ever. I'm from Canada but am so embarrassed that we have an airport like this. The staff (not all but most) that work there are so rude and unfriendly and make you feel unwelcome when you travel. It's already a lot to think about, the last thing you need is people try to stress you when they should be helping you and making you feel at ease after, all that's what the staff are paid for. They definitely need to work on people skills and how to be friendly. Very unfriendly environment, very sad.

✅ Verified Review | My hometown airport is definitely not one of the most impressive airports in the world. Arriving at Terminal 3, it felt as if we were in the developing world. The rattly old moving sidewalk was absolutely embarrassing, so were the cheap looking, unlit purple signs hanging from the ceiling. Everything else is grey, depressing and threadbare. The tiny, low-ceiling customs area was crowded with these new passport readers - there seemed to be no option as to whether we used them or not and thankfully there were not many flights at that time so I was through fast, but not before showing my passport and passport reader printout to several people (3 at last count - why?). There are posters everywhere exclaiming "Rethink Terminal 3" - well I think some more thinking is indeed in order. Departing from Terminal 1 late at night was marginally better. Parking at the terminal is hellish, with nothing to indicate to drivers where free spaces are located, so around and around you go, whole empty areas blocked off for no apparent reason. Signs to the terminal are again unlit. The terminal is spacious but lacks amenities landside. At 10pm the only thing open before security was a SwissChalet chicken outlet in a dowdy food court that would not have been out of place in a dying suburban shopping mall. Staff there disorganized, counting money on the counter, and could barely speak English. Through the very ugly security area (is this really a recently built terminal?) and down endless corridors, then another long moving sidewalk (slightly newer this time) above the terminal taking international-bound passengers to what is essentially a satellite terminal (E-gates). Aesthetically this area is quite nice with quite a few food options but it seems every seat has been fitted with a table-top Ipad - why not have seats one can actually relax in?

✅ Verified Review | This is a review for Toronto Pearson Terminal 3. I have used Terminal 1 in the past and enjoyed that experience. Terminal 3 is really the most miserable large airport I have travelled through so far. Travel to the airport via public bus, so had to get the shuttle train to the right terminal. The train itself is easy and fast, but getting to and from it is convoluted and slow. It took about 30 mins from drop off at T1 to arrival at T3. Check in via Aer Lingus was quick and easy. Security involved a long wait, and not enough space on the other side of the machines. You are pretty much dumped out into a thoroughfare of fellow travellers. The Departures area is a joke. It is a long corridor punctuated by busy gates, with one small central shopping area. There was some kind of marketing thing going on right in the middle that involved very loud music and dancing sales people, and it got in the way of everything. Food offerings are poor and/or overpriced, and spaced out so far that if you want to peruse all options you'd need to walk the whole airport. We searched high and low for a reasonably priced packaged sandwich for our 4 year old son. Average price $10-12. Could have just gone to Tim Hortons I guess. Gate areas in this terminal have been updated to be like lounge/restaurant style areas with ipads at most seats, but at the expense of traffic flow and actual space to move around. It felt kind of claustrophobic, and I don't usually suffer from that kind of thing. Travel from arrival gate to customs was long and strenuous. The customs halls are falling apart, and they have too many options for which huge line you have to join. If not for a couple of stressed and shouting staff members directing arriving passengers one by one to the right queue, it would have been total chaos. You have to use a computer to pass through passport control and it took an age, and was generally confusing. Not enough staff on hand to help. Customs officers are rude and inconsiderate. Our one took our documents and then had a 2.5 minute conversation with his colleage about what time their shifts were ending. Barely looked at us the whole time. Baggage handling is the worst I've experienced. 2.5 hours from arriving to the most overcrowded baggage hall I've ever used, til our bags started showing up. No carts. Staff on the ground had no idea what was going on. Pretty much a 'good luck' attitude. The airport is in no way coping with the current strike. Toilets were disgusting and too small. About a 10-15 min line up for using them in the baggage hall. Was told by a janitor there to allow my son, who was desperate to go, to urinate in the corner of the washroom and he would clean it up later. Is this really Toronto, Canada? Staff at ground transportation areas were unable to offer any more information beyond pointing and grunting. My lasting impression of this place is that staff here pretty much hate their jobs and that the level of care and urgency is at a real low.

✅ Verified Review | Security check was long and inefficient. Our boarding passes were checked twice and the security staff were not coordinating with each other. They also gave conflicting advice on what items needed to be removed from our baggage for screening. The toilets in the departures area Zone E were very dirty and I had to clean myself. Two urinals were blocked and for at least 45 mins.

❎ Unverified | I am speechless, just speechless, literally. We arrived back in Toronto yesterday afternoon from the U.K into absolute chaos, an amateur time three ringed circus. It took us over two and a half hours from landing on Air Transat flight, TS505, which was already delayed by a couple of hours, to be able to get through everything that was thrown at us in that Airport in order to make our way home. We were initially transported by bus to the main terminal after landing at the very back of the Airport. This was followed by having to endure a ridiculous queue in order to experience a new and bizarre computer border control system (which confused all of the passengers and just didn't work). Continuing on from there, we waited for over an hour for our baggage to be picked up on the carousel. What a big international Airport like Pearson were playing at, I will never know? To be honest, even staff at London Gatwick were talking about problems Pearson were having before we took off on our flight, we wondered what was going on. Once we landed seven hours later, we soon realized we were walking into the depths of hell. Two weeks prior to this, one of our bags was mislaid when we landed in London, it had not been put on our flight, although it was clearly labelled as a priority bag, which we had paid extra for and was with our other suitcase. This was two days before my daughter's wedding and all of our wedding clothes and things required for that event were in that bag. Luckily for us the bag was delivered to our hotel the following day, although it was late in the evening and panicked us throughout that afternoon, wondering if we had to do some late night shopping to buy other mens suits and clothing. To be honest, I would be ashamed if I was an employee of Pearson Airport, it's an embarrassment to the aviation world. A laughing stock.

❎ Unverified | Going thru customs was a long process. People were inefficient. When we finally got to the gate there was only one good option. Food very expensive and just sandwiches. Food was also terrible. Not clean. Restrooms one toilet not working no paper towels long lines. We had been traveling since 4 am and hadn't eaten so disappointed with only one food option. Someone scanned a person not on the flight and personnel inefficient un figuring it out. Flight left one hour late. Had to run to connecting and would have missed if that flight hadn't been delayed. Was first time and hopefully the last time that I have to go to Toronto.