Avoid This Awful Airport, Considered North America's Most Stressful
"Every single time we traveled through this airport for a connecting flight it was delayed numerous times, and it was the worst experience I have ever had with traveling and customer service," one passenger reported on Skytrax. "This airport is really rundown and antiquated, there are not enough toilets or urinals in the bathroom, and they're very dirty ... the lounge chairs are rotten through to the cushions, it's a disgrace," said another user. One reviewer simply said, "This airport really really sucks. I would not wish my worst enemy to traverse through this hellscape."
These unfortunate passengers are all talking about the same airport: Canada's Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ). They aren't alone. One study, conducted by Hawaiian Islands in 2022, analyzed reviews of airports all over the world and determined that in North America, the most stressful airport was Toronto Pearson. In September of 2023, a traveler satisfaction study by J.D. Power listed Toronto Pearson as the second worst airport in North America.
What's making Toronto Pearson so stressful
Everyone knows that airports can be stressful. There might be a long line for security, it might be extremely busy and too crowded to find a good place to sit and wait, or your gate might change at the last minute, sending you sprinting through the terminal. Any airport can land a passenger in a stressful situation; however, according to an analysis published by Hawaiian Islands — after examining 1,500 Google reviews for over 500 airports around the world — a whopping 76% of passenger reviews of Toronto Pearson International Airport indicated stress. "Some of the most commonly cited phrases in negative reviews include 'customs,' 'immigration,' 'layover,' 'embarrassment,' and 'lost luggage,'" the study notes.
Passengers on Skytrax ranked everything, including their interactions with airport staff, sanitation, and clarity of terminal signs, below average. Reviewers on Tripadvisor also complained about the signs, stating that not only did passengers have to travel extraordinary distances to get from one gate to another, but the signs made it seem like the only way to get there was by foot, making the possibility of missing your flight while jogging through the airport a real risk. Bizarrely, even the bathroom signs at Toronto Pearson have caused significant confusion in the past. In 2019, a frustrated customer shared a photo on Reddit of contradictory gendered bathroom signs, seemingly directing men and women to both the left and the right.
You'll probably be stuck there
There are a lot of things that can go wrong at an airport, but the most irritating might be flight delays. Not only can they screw up your travel itinerary and make you miss out on vital vacation time, but they also force you to spend additional hours in the airport – which is the last thing you want if that airport is Toronto Pearson. Unfortunately, one of the most frustrating things about this airport is that the chance of delays is shockingly high.
In 2023, CBC News interviewed one man who had been forced to wait inside his landed plane with his fellow passengers for a full two hours. When he was finally able to get inside Toronto Pearson International Airport, he was told that his baggage had been lost and his return flight was canceled. His experience isn't unique.
According to flight-tracking website FlightAware, in the summer of 2023, more than half of all flights coming out of Toronto Pearson were delayed — to the point that Air Canada actually began offering ticket changes for free for passengers who might experience delays at Toronto Pearson (via CNN Travel). While it is a large airport, there are significantly more delays than any comparable busy airport has. For example, data collected by InsureMyTrip reports that San Juan's Luis Muñoz Marín International had the highest percentage of flight delays in 2023 in the U.S. — at 33.9% — which doesn't even compare to the over 50% Toronto Pearson experiences.