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| - When an airport can make the Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport look good, you are obviously doing something wrong. Flying from Montreal to Las Vegas yesterday, I had a layover in Toronto. I landed at 7:15am. My flight was supposed to leave Toronto at 9:30am. When we landed, I went to the Departures monitor and It had the correct time and flight number, but it said "Final Call/Boarding Now" on the monitor. I could not get a straight answer or find anyone to help me. So, I just decided to get to through customs and sort it out when I got the U.S. gates area. I was floored that I had to go through security screening again. I had not been out of a secured area. I went through CATSA security screening in Montreal. There is NO reason to have to go through it again, if I haven't been outside a secured area. Once I got through there, the people trying to direct you through US Customs seemed to be lost on how to direct people... When I got to the final checkpoint to speak with TSA/Customs, the airport people had been allowing people who needed additional background checking done, and it was really stalling the already way too long lines. So, I finally make it through security and customs and I check the Departures monitor, and it still said "Final Call/Boarding Now" by the flight, so I'm walking briskly to the gate, which was F67, and they are boarding a flight for San Francisco. Naturally, I as well as everyone else is trying to ask the Air Canada personnel about the Vegas flight, and they are telling everyone they are trying to get out the flight to San Francisco and could not answer any questions, but to say the monitor was wrong. They were yelling at people to have a seat. I checked the monitor and it looked like whoever or whatever was running the Departures monitor had it all screwed up. The San Francisco flight didn't note that it was boarding. It just said "on time" by it. Needless to say, these two ladies were scrambling trying to find everyone for that flight. So, finally it was decided to move the Vegas flight to Gate F61, because the other flight was still at Gate F67. The Vegas flight was on a huge Boeing 767, which holds a little less than 300 people. And it was a full flight. F61 clearly is not set up to have that many people at that gate area. There is a bar/restaurant called Apropos right there, and most of the seating area is for it. So, that pushed people into the walkway area, which was frustrating to people trying to get to other gates and the people driving the carts making deliveries and such. Not to mention, it was frustrating to the store next to the gate, in which people were trying to shop and the people going to Las Vegas were getting in the way. Finally it's time to board, and the PA system at the gate was not working right. The boarding process was in terrible disarray. They had all kinds of issues with boarding by zones. They had people trying to get away with having too much carry on luggage. A lot of that could be eliminated at Ticketing/Check-In or by CATSA by telling people you can't carry that much stuff on the plane, or it's too heavy to go on the plane and eliminate delays of people boarding. When we finally got everyone on the plane, it was about 20 minutes after we were supposed to be in the air. Being 20 minutes late did not bother me, that's nothing by today's standards. But for the biggest airport in Canada, to have that many issues, is a HUGE problem. And unless I decide to visit Toronto itself, I will never book a trip through this airport again. And I was looking at coming to Toronto next Summer, but given the people I dealt with there, I sincerely doubt that I will. It's going to be awhile before i get the bad taste of dealing with this airport out of my mouth. Maybe if you're Canadian and you're flying domestic it's fine, but otherwise avoid it if you're coming from or going to the United States or other destinations outside of Canada.
One more thing, I never could get the Wi Fi to work. It kept saying that it was connected, but I kept getting network errors. i experienced this quite a bit while I was in Canada. I have never had this issue in Vancouver or Calgary. But with good tech companies like Bell, Rogers and Tellus, they should have great Wi Fi in Canada. Eastern Canada definitely needs a lot of help in that area.
I am giving it two stars, because the dining choices are outstanding. I wish I had been hungry. And they had a Tim Hortons, which was worth it.
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