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| - My fondest memories of airports for the most part are positive experiences if they generally do not last long. What I'm saying is if time is money, you don't want to spend a lot of it at airports in lines waiting, being delayed or all the other little things that add up to make time simply vanish. No, you want time on your side in every way and you want to keep it and hold onto it and use it as efficiently and as productive as you possibly can if you're like me.
We were going to visit our friends in Montreal for the weekend and we live minutes away from Toronto Pearson international airport, minutes by car - less than 10 in fact given any normal traffic situation. We're so close when I check into my local McDonald's at Commerce and Eglinton, Pearson appears on the list of nearby businesses to check into so yes, that close.
This is why I've never really considered flying out of Billy Bishop airport aka Toronto Island airport aka YTZ. I'm so close to Pearson that the thought of going all the way to the bottom of Bathurst to get on a plane seemed like a waste of time because it's not like the city is less than 10 minutes away from my front door but also the thought that Toronto Island with their tiny prop planes gave me the impression that this place was more like Buttonville airport with leisure aircraft flying around like drones or toys and such. I was wrong in every way. My impression of Billy Bishop was so off there is no meter that can measure such a misconception.
Well in planning to visit my friends in Montreal, we also use their buddy passes to fly standby as they are employees of Air Canada. The only down side is when flying as standby passengers with buddy passes are considered the lowest priority because your seats are basically "non-revenue". When flights are oversold and the loads are negative that means that there are essentially no seats available for passengers such as us. This was the case this past weekend for Pearson to Dorval (YYZ-YUL) flights.
What other place can get you from Toronto to Montreal in about an hour if you are flying Air Canada or another airline? What about Toronto Island airport? The loads for those flights handled by Air Canada Express get you to YUL in about the same time! My friend told me that the loads for those flights looked friendly and they too leave pretty much every hour so we had a much greater chance to get to YUL without getting bumped.
We got a lift down to Billy Bishop leaving around 1030am on Friday and got down in less than half an hour. Walking to the airport crossing we decided to take the underground tunnel over the ferry because there's no waiting involved. Walking to the terminal is helped by the fact that there are elevators down to the moving sidewalk in the tunnel across to the island and elevators or escalators to take as well. Checking in was a charm and security is short and sweet while the walk through security to the gates and waiting area is so close.
There is a great times savings factor here and it adds up. The waiting area is really nicely done. Some chairs are more comfortable than others and while it seemed pretty packed, flights move fast and embarking is quick so seats open up relatively quickly. There's a place to get some food at the corner but I also noticed that if you get a coffee in a mug or water in a glass that there's staff going around taking dishes away so it's constantly cleaned.
This airport is fast to get to, fast to traverse and fast to load. The plane we ended up on was a Bombardier 400 with a 2 x 2 configuration so it's either a window or aisle seat. The flight was about an hour to get to YUL.
When landing, the "taxi" if you want to even call it that was about as fast as it took my phone to power up. At Pearson it can be a good 20-30 minute ordeal to get to the gate. That's about how long it took us to drive down to Billy Bishop from home near Pearson! We checked baggage and that took not even 5 minutes to come down the chute. Basically from landing to transit including disembarking, baggage claim, leaving the terminal and walking to Fleet Street it took maybe 30 minutes. That's a fast egress out of the airport and I have to say it wasn't inconvenient at all. The TTC however is a bit of a ways since if you want a station the Bathurst bus is accessible from Fleet and Bathurst up a bit from the airport but not that bad. If you have a lot of luggage however it could be a bit of an inconvenience to get there. Porter had complimentary shuttles I'm assuming to Union but we didn't bother with it.
All in all there's a significant time savings if you are travelling to nearby cities serviced by Air Canada or Porter whether domestically or to the US. Billy Bishop has the small town conveniences and bypasses of big city bottlenecks that large airports have but is minutes away from the downtown core. I'd consider YTZ over YYZ for future trips since it's very comfortable and convenient.
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