As we all know from news reports released over the past two years Toronto's Pearson Airport is rated one of the worst in Canada. Google it you will find a number of articles. I couldn't agree more. I have traveled a little in my day and I have rarely had a good experience coming into Canada. Being a Canadian citizen this is not only embarrassing but its down right pathetic. What has improved over the last two years and this is more to do with the initiatives taken by individual airlines than the GTAA, is the ease there is to avoid long check in lines by printing your boarding passes online. The first time I have used this feature was this past July on a trip to Florida. I had nothing more than a small backpack which I carried on so the night before I checked in and printed my boarding pass, went to the airport the next day via Mi-way route 7, was there in 40 minutes and walked through customs within 20 minutes. Not a problem, the problem I have constantly found is coming into Canada. There are ridiculous waits to go through customs and then there is the dreaded baggage wait. I have rarely had the experience of getting my luggage in under 30 minutes which is far too long for what is not really that big of an airport. But then again when it takes 10 minutes to open the door of a plane what's another 30 minutes.
Mississauga News featured an article a few weeks back on the new Air-Rail Link (ALR) which is being headed up by Kathy Haley. Kathy is one of the people who was behind the modern gas station designs amongst numerous other achievements. Her vision of the new ALR is refreshing but it is not enough from the GTAA. Kathy's vision is similiar to that of London England an airport that is fairly well thought out from boutiques to transportation. If you ever fly into London there are three major airports you can land in and a few smaller ones. All of these airports interconnect either through rail or direct coaches which run most of the day. While the price point for fares that she mentions in the article runs from $15-35 it is a little steep if you ask me. I don't recall paying more than 7 pounds when I took it 3 years ago in London. While the direction that Kathy is bringing to the table sounds promising and I believe she will pull it off I think the GTAA seriously needs to step up their vision of the whole of Pearson's operations.
The first thing that needs to be changed is the customs area. The last time I went through in July they had completely eliminated the individual lines for the counters so all travelers went into one big line and eventually went to the next available counter. I am not convinced that this saved more time or was any more efficient. In many airports I have traveled to there is always a line for citizens of that particular country. This in my opinion is the first thing that should be on the GTAA's list of implementing. There is absolutely no reason why a Canadian should be subjected to waiting behind a group of people traveling on Visa's who are being branded as suspicious or warranting long periods of questioning. As bad as that sounds that is the reality of some countries reputation. Unjust in most cases yes, but security is security and we have protocals for a reason. By that is not sufficient enough for those of us who live here. We should be given priority plain and simple. Just like those who go through the process of enrolling in the Nexus program are given a preferred treatment the same should be applied to those who are traveling on Visa's, they should get their own line. Nexus, Citizens and Visa's should be how the lines operate.
It is great that there are shuttles running between the terminals 1 and 3 (who know what happened to 2 it closed actually) but nevertheless the shuttle rail has made things a lot easier and cut down on travel and wait times. But the other big problem I have seen is the how slow the people working at the terminal are to actually get the plane offloaded from the passengers to the baggage. I'm not commenting on people's work ethics but rather the overall system. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I've waited up to ten minutes for the door of the plane to be opened, this is just stupid. Then there is customs and then the baggage pickup. I have waited up to almost an hour on one trip, 40 minutes on a few and very rarely under 30 minutes. Again I say in perspective to many airports I have seen who have a lot more terminals the wait is never more than 20 minutes, actually that's a long wait.
So Kudos to the GTAA for putting a new initiative together to ease the method of travel to and from the airport. Now its time to live up the vision that Kathy has for the ARL being "Something that's considered world-class." In a great city like Toronto why can't their airport live up to the same ideals.
Traveling Blodgett
No comments:
Post a Comment