Vancouver Airport

✅ Verified Review | Vancouver airport is clean, beautiful, great seating, food, and has very friendly staff wandering about to help out. My one concern is the international and domestic security. I travel, worldwide, often. And, I come through YVR often. Almost every time, the security personnel are discourteous and unorganized. Today, the person directing us towards numbered lines was rude and her instructions were very unclear and scattered. There were many non English speaking people in line which were barked at by her and several others. Speaking loudly and rudely does not magically make things clear. It makes people uneasy and confused. English is my first language and I wasn't even sure what she, and others wanted, or why we were being spoken to that way. There was obvious animosity between 2 staff which caused a back up as one refused to step up to help us move along, SO unprofessional. I understand that security personnal have an important job to do, and they're not there to be best friends with us, but they could do much better. They can be organized, kind, friendly, firm, and clear all at the same time. Security, in many other airports manages to do it quite well. The security at YVR is consistently unprofessional. This does not put our minds at ease.

✅ Verified Review | Vancouver Airport arrival logistics past the customs clearance is atrocious. You have to navigate through the greeting area which is often a bottleneck of passengers with their luggage and greeters. Terrible planning for this area. Then if you are taking a shuttle to a hotel or parking after planeloads of arriving passengers, you are faced with masses of people crowding on a narrow sidewalk and the shuttle buses pulling up haphazardly beside the sidewalk. So there you are with your luggage, fighting your way through the crowd, and trying to find out when and where your shuttle is arriving. This trip my wife and I took to the pavement to find a place on the sidewalk to stand while we tried to watch for our bus. Terrible planning again. This is my home airport and find it stupid to spend so much money on artwork and not enough on the actual functioning of the airport for the passengers, particularly the arrival areas.

At the American departures area. Terrible food selection with very little choice. Tried to get a meal such as take away sushi and was not available. Then tried to get a drink at the terrible Vancouver Canuck lounge and told it was a 20 min wait when at least 20 tables were visibly empty. Not given a choice to sit at the bar, just shuffled on. Not impressed. One of worst set of choices in a international departure area.

✅ Verified Review | Serious lack of vegan food! I like to take food on the plane because the airlines are forever mixing up the specialty meals and I find at least 50% of flights are unable to provide vegan food no matter how many times you confirm it. Considering the great food and plentiful options I've found around Vancouver and Whistler I was really shocked to discover that the only vegan options at the airport was hot chips or subway.

1.5 hours for luggage to arrive after 13 hour flight into Vancouver Airport. This was midday on Saturday. No plane problems apparently. Just not enough staff. This is really poor and annoyed us as we missed out on seeing something we really wanted to see. Departing domestic at quiet time the next day. Queues again. Put more staff on.

Poor service! I had to wait 20 min in the plane for ground staff to arrive and then more than 30 min for the luggage. All of this at midnight with a 1 year old. I wonder if we can ask for our airport tax back? Certainly not what I expect from this facility.

✅ Verified Review | Arriving on a domestic flight from Calgary. Once again, pleasant experience on arrival as YVR is generally very easy to navigate. The reason I scored this experience a 6/10 is because the trauma baggage claim at YVR has caused me. No matter where I arrive from, with Priority Baggage Handling or not, I always find myself waiting for at least 35 minutes before the first bags are dispensed. I try not to check bags if I have to fly into/via YVR but for a lot of my trips, I can't really avoid it. Airport was really peaceful upon arrival, with a number of restaurants to choose from on the departures level. As a whole, baggage claim was the complete bummer, but everything else is expected and good as per usual.

✅ Verified Review | Arriving into Vancouver Airport on Cathay Pacific CX838 from Hong Kong on Labour Day. As midday hours are one of the busiest times at YVR, I was expecting a line-up at Immigration and baggage claim. However, it was worse. An overflow area of foreign citizens had to be set up to accommodate the number of travellers that day. It took me an hour just to get through immigration and then there comes baggage claim. Even with my frequent status with the airline and my luggage being considered as "Priority", my bags weren't dispensed by the time I got through immigration. Not the first time this has happened, it's every single time I fly inbound internationally. YVR definitely needs to work on that. Other than that, easy navigation, great wifi accessibility, and great airport staff to navigate arriving passengers.

✅ Verified Review | This was my very first domestic travels from Vancouver International and I'm not disappointed. Contrary to my experiences when travelling internationally, security officers were really helpful and greeted all passengers in both English and French. Security lines are definitely shorter and the walk from security to the gate was very short. In addition, there was a wide range of restaurants and souvenir shops to choose from, which is good since I forgot my umbrella and desperately needed one. However, more gate seating would be nice. The good thing about YVR is that there's wifi everywhere, along with the great selection of shops/restaurants, makes long waits bearable. Overall, very well designed airport, easy to navigate, clean, all sorts of accessibilities. If only the international portion of the airport would improve, it would make the most ideal airport ever.

My wife and I recently arrived from Mexico. We are both handicapped with mobility issues needing wheelchair assistance for longer walks. Since we were walking with the aid of a luggage cart we were told not to go to the wheelchair entrance but the regular line having to stand with difficulty for about 20-25 minutes to get through customs. Once we were through customs were were transported to the waiting area before boarding our plane. In Cancun we had 2 wheelchairs waiting for us at the airplane door. Two attendants transported us on our wheelchairs through customs, they picked up our luggage and dropped us off at our bus. When leaving Cancun we were met at the bus by two attendants with wheelchairs. Again they took our luggage. Took us through customs and were wheeled to the loading area at our gate. When it was time to load the plane they wheeled us to the entrance of the plane. Arriving back in Vancouver we had one wheelchair waiting and the called for another. We we transported by golf cart from the exit ramp of the plane to our luggage pickup and told that was a far as he goes. The driver said he would call for 2 wheelchairs. We waited for 10 minutes and none arrived. Found an attendant and we were told we have to go to our airline desk which was closed to get chairs. Found two wheelchairs in the area but they were locked up. We made our way to the bus pickup. I suggest that the personnel at the airport take a lesson from the Mexicans on how to treat and serve people.