Toronto Pearson Airport

We had to return from Trinidad to Toronto by Caribbean Airlines sooner than expected as my husband was not well so I asked the Purser to arrange for us to de-plane first on wheelchairs. We did get off first but then was left in a crowd of 6 people all in wheelchairs with 2 people to push all of us. This has happened time after time whenever we travel with wheelchair access at Pearson and it is just ridiculous that they cannot hire the sufficient amount of porters to wheel all the passengers in a reasonable amount of time. When we were leaving for Trinidad they came so late with the wheelchairs to take us to the departure lounge that we had to board immediately and did not have time to eat anything. My husband is a diabetic so as soon as we boarded I had to ask the Purser again for something sweet so his blood sugar wouldn't go low. It is torture to travel by wheelchair when leaving from Pearson Airport as they are so disorganized.

As well ditto experience as R Fraser. Arrived at 6.30 am for an 8.20 am flight to West Palm was not permitted to proceed to the customs until 7 am where the lines were crazy. Once I cleared the customs and security put my shoes back on checked the board flashing that my flight was boarding no time for breakfast or coffee ran to the gate got onboard as they were starting to close all the baggage compartments and we were off with half of plane full of people and the other half still at customs. Pilot announced that we would be leaving in 15 minutes after they removed all the luggage of those that did not make it. This is not the way to start a vacation stressed hungry and running for your plane. I'm travelling in April to Vegas with my senior mother I hope that this is sorted out by then I'm already worried about our flight!

Feb 13 2015 my wife and I arrived (late from Boston thanks to Air Canada) to be greeted by the most rude unorganized untrained airport staff we have encountered. We missed our connecting flight to Tokyo (thanks to the inept staff of Air Canada) and had to spend the night in a hotel. The Air Canada customer service rep told us to go to ground level S-5 and a shuttle would pick us up. She also said it was a long walk to get there (true very true). We asked her how to get there and she said to follow the signs. What signs? We had to move against the flow of people to leave the secure area. We had to ask security how to go through screening in the opposite direction to leave they were not sympathetic to our dilemma at all. We asked no less than 3 airport staff for directions to ground floor S-5 and never got a coherent answer. The airport is the most confusing unorganized airport we have ever been in. Directional signage is woefully inadequate and confusing. The staff are poorly trained and not customer friendly. The food choices are scant at best. On our return trip through Toronto to Boston we found the airport dirty mush trash on the floors and in the restrooms. We waited at gate F55 which was drab with very little seating. The air quality was so bad that my wife and I went for a long walk in search of some air that didn't reek of jet exhaust. We really have nothing positive to say about our visit there. We will gladly pay more money in the future to avoid Toronto Pearson and Air Canada.

Completely agree with everything said by R. Fraser regarding US customs procedure at Pearson. We were directed to "Gate 15" with hundreds of others. We arrived at the airport at 6.10 am for a flight to Sarasota at 8.40 am and almost missed the flight! Our names were even called out! This was bad enough for me but for my 80-year-old husband it was a nightmare. If it had not been for me calling to a US customs agent that we were about to miss our flight we would have! US customs has to do something about their process. More staff? More staff when needed? Revised processing? Given that those flights to Florida are probably 85% senior citizens there has to be a better way to process us.

One year ago My family and I were flying to Florida on Air Canada. We arrived early as airlines suggest. Went smoothly through U.S. Customs and security and had a nice leisurely breakfast before going to the gate for boarding. Thinking to do the same this year we arrived early only to run into utter chaos orchestrated either by Air Canada or the U.S. Customs. Welcome to the Cattle Pen at Pearson! For some reason early arrival has to be punished by putting passengers in a holding area from which you are released with insufficient time to catch your plane! Air Canada personnel were frantically pulling people out of the security lines to try and get them to the planes all of which had to delay departure because of missing passengers which they knew to be somewhere out there in the chaos. No time to shop no time to eat. Stores and restaurants must be losing heavily. There are a finite number of passengers to process. Letting early arrivals go through early helps the process! I will never fly to the States through Pearson again! I am Canadian and am ashamed of this Airport. Please somebody with intelligence take over the administration before we become the laughing stock of the world.

An absolute nightmare my wife and I arrived at the airport 2hrs 10minutes before our 8.40am flight to the U.S. First problem was at the check-in kiosk that would not read my wife's passport was directed by the machine to report to check-in assistance aisle 6 only to find about 250 people ahead of us. After standing in line about 30 minutes an Air Canada rep went along the line pulling people out that were obviously going to miss their flight if they stayed in that line we were then directed to a priority check-in line in the vicinity of aisle 7. Got checked in there got our boarding pass and luggage tags but a staff member in a yellow jacket directed us to go to aisle 15 dragging our bags behind us believe me it is a long hike. Arriving at aisle 15 we rounded a corner to find ourselves in a huge holding pen with about 300-400 people milling about with no one in authority to tell people what to do you can not exit this room to proceed to US Customs pre-clearance until a set amount of time before your flight. It wouldn't make any difference how early you got to the airport you are not going to get out of that room on time there is no orderly process for getting through there. Finally exited after about another 30 minutes into another large room where someone checks your boarding pass and allows you to enter another long hallway into the pre-clearance area here you have a bag drop security and another session with a passport reader before reaching US immigration. After passing through there we had another extremely long hike to our gate arriving out of breath and in semi-panic as the flight was boarding. Long story short after arriving 2 hours 10 minutes before flight time we made it with just minutes to spare. This experience was the worst in over 50 years of air travel for us.

I fly frequently and I generally find the airport reasonable. The facilities good the staff pleasant the luggage timely compared to most airports. The only issue is an occasional block leaving the airport as customs forms are handed in.

I fly all over the world including extensively in Africa and Asia and can report that Pearson T1 continues to have the slowest baggage handling of all airports bar none. Customs and immigration processing is fast for Canadians now but it doesn't matter if you have a checked bag. Last night was a case in point: touched down at 10.20 pm (Cathay Pacific from Hong Kong) zipped through immigration but didn't get out of the baggage hall until after midnight.

22 December 2014 - boarding flight from YYZ to YVR: very very slow processing times that the CATSA Security Screening checkpoints. There were 10-15 people ahead of me in the queue and it took 20-25 minutes to go through security. Allow yourself at least 2-3 hours in order to make your flights and at least 4 hours of you are connecting flights at YYZ. Nothing particular impressively at YYZ other than exorbitantly high food and drink prices and expensive restaurants. On the plus side they had some airport workers singing Christmas carols which spread a bit of cheer in an otherwise lacklustre airport. If the carol singing could make the queues move faster at YYZ that would have been a nice Christmas present.

Arrived at Pearson T1 from London. Customs hall was chaos. Guy trying to direct unrelenting stream of passenger into three queues (fix - put up a sign). More people trying to match passengers with too-few customs machines (fixes - More machines. Make the green lights easy to see). Baggage claim area was a bad joke. Carousel was filled with bags from Munich but no Munich passengers were around to get them. Hence London bags could not fit even when they eventually started to flow (after about 30 minutes). Not a Pearson person in sight to help in any way. Baggage reclaim at Pearson T1 is legendarily bad. (Fix - complete service review needed.) Then the queue to get out of the baggage area. Thousands of people funnelled into three lanes to hand in the customs card. Three or four lanes were not staffed. Queues ran around the hall. Another 20 minutes lost with no value-added activity. (Fix - Match the card collectors with the demand - it isn't all that hard!)