SFO isn’t particularly bad. Neither is Denver.
Agreed. Living in NorCal for 2.5 years, I thought SFO was alright. Really liked their transit connection to downtown. But they have some crappy gates too. If you've ever taken a regional flight from SFO, you'll recall them.
YYZ (and all Canadian airports) need to do more to attract pax because of this.
Airports don't attract pax. Airlines do. You are thinking of some ideal world where pax are discerning and picking out which airport they transfer at. In reality, all of Air Canada's transborder to international growth at Pearson comes from their transatlantic joint venture with United and Lufthansa. Those partners have agreed to facilitate a certain amount of growth and AC is pricing tickets accordingly. Heck, AC will literally price the YYZ-Europe portion lower for Americans than Canadians departing from YYZ to maintain marketshare. All done in coordination with UA and LH.
There's no pax deciding where they are going to transfer. They are given fare options that direct a certain portion of the JVs transatlantic US/Latin America- Europe traffic through AC's hubs.
With an increase in point-to-point travel, pax have more options. Middle tier airports are growing too, and some are offering international destinations.
And Pearson can't compete with that. Nobody is going to choose a layover in a foreign airport just because the lounge is a bit nicer. So if Pearson loses some pt2pt traffic, so be it.
This can’t be the reason....Going by the Masterplan, if there are any slot restrictions it is not due to airside limitations, but lack of terminal/gate capacity.
It absolutely is. Pearson is a Level 3 slot controlled airport. The slots that are available aren't in timings that are advantageous to further growth. Pearson's on-time performance is among the worst in North America of the larger airports. So until they get another runway, there's not going to be as much opportunity for growth. AC has largely achieved growth by trying to find opportunities for those shoulder/off-peak slots, upgauging (for example they now send widebodies to SFO and LA) to offer more seats, and consolidating service to smaller destination onto larger aircraft to free up slots. But that kind of growth has its limits.
Aside from that, for AC, bolstering Montreal just makes sense for several reason. First, eggs in one basket and all that. I doubt they want to end up like Delta with Atlanta. Next, Montreal is less of a backtrack from the Maritimes, and effectively has nearly as much of a catchment for international and transborder as Pearson, when you count Ottawa, and all of Quebec.
The Gate 193 extension doesn’t cut it and looks incredibly cheap. For me; improving the waiting area with light, windows, amenities is far more important than adding glass jet bridges.
am only judging by the pics.
I don't see anything in the pictures that are all that bad. They are clean and functional. And that's exactly how I remember it from the night I used one of these gates. Seating, lighting, windows were as good as other gates. The only difference was that very spartan hallway to connect and the lack of shops and restaurants.
Moreover, I stand by what I said, having a handful of gates with no shops immediately nearby is very much not a reason to avoid an airport. But if it matters that much, it's really very easy to make sure that those gates are allocated to lower-yielding traffic.
In the end, that pier will get developed in due course and will end up more like the rest. It's just going to take longer than what we've seen with the rest. In no small measure because the airlines at Pearson have been particularly averse to accelerating development and want the GTAA to get debt and costs under control. If they aren't willing to support more development, I don't get how the GTAA is supposed to push for nicer facilities.
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