Originally Posted by
billdokes
I think 'busier' is relative to time of day. I've been in the YVR DOM when it's been 100% + a line-up and 30 mins later after a couple of Trans-con WB's depart it's half empty...if I showed up then I wouldn't think it wasn't busy at all. Same with YYZ Int'l...if you're on the 1315 departures to Osaka + Haneda, it's probably pretty civilized in there, but if you're on one of the 9 flights departing for Europe between 2000 and 2100 you probably will find the place to be a Zoo from 1830 to 2030. YYZ TB is often nuts early in the morning for the same reason...ton's of flights leaving around the same time, but at 3pm in the afternoon it's usually pretty quiet. It definitely appears that the MLL's have been built for the mean load not the peak load leaving a lot of room for different experiences depending on when you access.
I don't know if they were "built for" the mean load.
10 years ago, long after most of these lounges were built, the only capacity issues I ever saw were "no guest passes at the moment" signs at YYZ TB.
And that was back when 35K had access with guest privileges, and they were still selling memberships.
I'm sure they're carrying more passengers now, but I'm not convinced the percentage of passengers each day with access has gone up much, if at all.
They've been pretty consistent in their messaging that the issue is dwell time. Though when that was first stated, the schedule was still recovering from COVID, and minimum connection times had been set to stupidly high numbers, so my involuntary dwell time was definitely substantially higher than I like.
But they've been pretty openly trying to add more capacity in recent years. YYZ Dom Cafe. YYZ TB Express MLL. "Optimized" seating in existing lounges. (Future) YVR and YUL Cafe.
They've also pretty openly said their main constraint is getting space in the airport. I don't really know what more they could do, other than blocking 50Ks
