7 Ways Pearson Airport Is Trying To Make Things Less Chaotic For Travellers

Toronto Pearson Airport was once known as a pretty great place to travel to and from, but now has a bad rep for being the worst airport in the world. With that comes a lot of room for improvement.

On Friday, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), Deborah Flint, announced some updates regarding the issues occurring at Pearson Airport, along with some solutions.

Here are seven ways Toronto Pearson Airport plans to make things less chaotic for travellers.

A less than 15-minute wait at security

Many people have seen and experienced the ridiculous and horrific security lines at Toronto Pearson Airport. The uproar on social media hasn't made that any easier either.

Flint said that there have been improvements to this issue. Their partners, CATSA, have recently hired hundreds of new employees to screen people at Pearson to try to put this problem behind them.

"The latest statistics that CATSA have provided indicate that 82% of passengers are now being screened in less than 15 minutes."

Delayed flights

The main reason for Pearson Airport's new status as the world's worst airport is because of all the flight delays.

FlightAware released data to Narcity which states that 52.5% of the airport's flights were delayed between May 26 to July 19. This means that Toronto Pearson Airport was the number one airport in their worldwide list for delays.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the airport saw a ton of delays, and people were really unhappy about it.

So, on Friday, Flint said their "data shows that we are improving week over week, the airline on-time performance across the airport increased to 44% of all flights being on time. This is not a number that I would normally tout at all. But given where we have been for the last four weeks and even before that, improving from 35% is substantial."

This isn't outstanding because, technically, more than half of the flights are still being interrupted, but it's a step towards improvement.

Less time waiting on the plane when landing

Have you landed at Pearson Airport recently and had the flight crew tell you to stay seated until the border officers have allowed the passengers to disembark? This was mainly happening because there was no room in the customs hall due to the backlog.

Well, this annoying issue is slowly getting resolved as well.

"The Canadian government has done its part in increasing the number of border officers and also streamlined ArriveCan and health processes that have led to a significant reduction and the number of arriving international passengers that have been hauled on board, which was occurring quite frequently because there was no room in the customs halls," Flint said.

This hold has only happened 19 times last week compared to the 60 times per week during the previous four weeks.

Baggage wait times

The horrific videos on social media have shown so many issues at baggage claim in the airport. As a result, Toronto Pearson is working on fixing the wait times for travellers arriving from domestic flights for more efficiency.

"The average wait time for bags is now at 24 minutes for the first bags to arrive at our baggage carousels, and that is continuing to improve across all different parts of the baggage delivery system," she added.

More staff in the airport

More tools to create a smoother traveller experience

"Our goal is for passengers to have a predictable, reliable and enjoyable journey," Flint said.

What does this mean exactly? Well, Pearson Airport wants to add more tools to make the traveller's experience a smoother journey by telling them what to expect.

Some tools include infographics and wait time dashboards with information on how busy each terminal gets at certain times of the day. This will be shared in the "At A Glace" tab on their website to give travellers more real-time information.

Additionally, in the future, they will be providing live wait updates during key processes in the passenger journey to allow them to get more insights into their airport experience.

Virtual Queuing