recreationaltimetraveller

I will try very carefully to not stray too far off topic because there's a YYZ thread elsewhere. (sorry in advance Adam)

I witnessed this first hand yesterday transiting YYZ from YOW to LAX and was trapped in the chaos for almost an hour when the bag scanning machine used for US Customs went down and everything just stopped.

YYZ has been horrible for the past few months to the point I'm actively avoiding it, but the chaos yesterday was a whole new level of disfunction.

CBP totally unapologetic about the situation, CATSA blaming CBP for the line stopping - it took them 45 minutes to realize that some people (like me) didn't have checked bags and could still travel, and Air Canada refusing to provide any assistance because it was a CBP and CATSA problem not theirs.

In line, I called the concierge to ask if my flight to LAX was going to be delayed because it was about 10 minutes before boarding, we hadn't moved in 45 minutes, and I wasn't sure I was going to make it if it was going to depart on time. The app still said on time, which is why I called the concierge to dig into it a bit further (inbound was from Manchester, so good chance inbound was delayed offloading due to metering) and she assured me it was on time and would board on time. I finally made it through and ran to the gate (as did others in my situation with no bags) only for us to start boarding 45 minutes late (for the reasons I suspected up thread). Had Air Canada been able to provide accurate information I would have felt less stressed.

It's clear that there's poor non-existent communication across all parties involved: airport authority, CBSA/CBP, CATSA, and Air Canada and while that isn't the root cause for any issue it amplifies it because no one can proactively come up with solutions.

In conversations with AC SDs on my recent flights, they all seem to be wanting to avoid YYZ because of the ongoing issues. To steer this back on topic, AC is aware of the ongoing challenges of the airport, they're happening every day and have been for months, but seems to show no foresight in planning solutions like forcing longer MCTs, having more staff on hand to deal with problems, improving communication with other parties, increasing turn times for planes inbound from international destinations. These all feel like solvable problems to me that would proactively prevent some of the cascading issues.


After yesterday I will try to avoid that airport at all costs for the foreseeable future.