03-08-2023, 06:08 AM
(03-07-2023, 05:09 PM)tomh009 Wrote:(03-05-2023, 03:39 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: As an aside rant...I hate Pearson, it's a terrible airport...I don't know why we got stuck with such nonsense. Schiphol has no end of problems here, but I've had nothing but smooth experiences in it.
And as an aside response, I don't hate Pearson, it's better than many other airports that I have traveled through, and especially many US ones.
YYZ is busy, and it can get crowded, but the T1 redesign dates to well before COVID, and T3 is from before the 9/11 attacks and subsequent security clampdown. Check-ins are slower now, security is slower now, boarding is slower now, immigration and customs are slower now -- and all of those contribute to increased congestion.
I won't claim to have been to a huge number of airports, but I definitely preferred SFO and SEA to Pearson. I was at LGA and it was...much much worse.
It's not just crowding that is a problem, but the inconsistent design and confusing navigation. This is largely to do--I think--with the layout being...reconfigurable? It seems that different spaces can be used for US bound flights or international flights at different times, and those spaces are segregated by doors that are opened or closed at different times.
This also becomes a huge problem when flights are delayed. My last flight to the Netherlands was at the gate next to a US bound flight which was delayed. This meant the doors were closed and we couldn't go into the space where our gate was and we had 4 full flights crowding into the waiting room for 2 gates. More, because these spaces are all segregated, they don't have full facilities or restaurants.
Other parts of the airport might be better...I rarely fly domestically so I don't see them all that often.