Toronto Pearson International Airport

- Mississauga, YYZ, Terminal 1, Terminal 3

Toronto Pearson International Airport, is a very large and modern airport, situated in Mississauga, 22.5km west of downtown Toronto. A small part is also situated in Toronto (Etobicoke district). The airport handles more then 40 million passengers a year. Pearson (IATA code: YYZ) is the largest and busiest airport in Canada, as well as the main hub for Air Canada. The first flight landed there in 1939, the airport was then called Malton, changed name to Toronto International Airport in 1958, but changed again name to LBPearson in 1984, after Lester B Pearson, the 14th Canadian prime minister. The airport has fast train connections to Union Station, UP Express (takes about 40 minutes). There is a futuristic elevated train, the LINK, that connects the terminals with the nearby hotels. The airport has 2 active terminals and 5 runways. In Terminal 1 you find the world's fastest moving walkway. Terminal 1 is the largest one (567m²) and was designed by a joint venture between Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and Airport Architects Canada. The other terminal is called Terminal 3. There is no Terminal 2, it was demolished in 2007.

We used Pearson when we arrived in Toronto from Copenhagen via London, when flying to Chicago and back to Toronto from Chicago to switch planes. When you take the plane from Toronto to the USA, they do all the security scannings, passport controls and other controls at Pearson Airport. When we landed in Chicago, we could just pick up our bagages and walk into the US, less then 20 minutes after we left the plane!

There are also several smaller airports in the metro area, the most important one is the Toronto City Airport, also called Billy Bishop, that is situated on the Toronto Islands, right opposite downtown. Due to its location it is served only by propeller planes, but is much closer to downtown then Pearson Airport, that was built at the same time.