In today's day and age, more than ever before, the specific airport experience is an important factor in travel planning. It might be worth paying a little more to avoid certain airports (or busy times).
+1000. Take YYZ for example, which was recently rated one of the worst airports worldwide for delays & lost baggage. Excuse the long post.
I flew YYZ-DEN 2 weeks ago and YYZ/AC was an absolute nightmare:
- Got to airport at 6 am on a Sunday morning to find absolute chaos & huge crowds of people everywhere.
- Even priority checkin took a half hour. Priority line for security, and had my kids with me (so they put you at front of priority line) took another 15-20 min.
- US customs preclearance line took over 2 hours (Nexus application is still in progress!)
- Finally get to front of customs line, only to be told that our luggage (which we checked in 3 hours earlier) still hadn't cleared customs due to a luggage backlog.
- Sent back to a waiting room with many others and waited another hour until our luggage cleared customs.
- Missed the flight during that time, even though it had been delayed ~2 hours.
- Finally cleared customs, sent wife & kids to lounge and then waited over 2 hours in customer service line to rebook. Lounge agent couldn't help. (While in line I met a french guy who had been stuck in YYZ for over 24 hours already).
- Called AC while in line but they couldn't even put my call in the queue due to call volume.
- Got to front of line, no direct or connecting flights available for more than 24 hours, so I took standby on a flight a few hours later.
- Cleared standby and got seats 5 min before gate closed, only to then be told that we can't fly because our bags wouldn't make it onto the flight.
- Flight was then delayed 30 min due to the luggage-loading truck breaking down, so they said we could get on and our luggage would make it.
- Boarded and got delayed another 30 min or so.
- Landed in DEN and found that our bags were not at the carousel, along with 6-8 other people on our flight who also didn't get theirs
- No AC employees anywhere in the airport and couldn't reach AC by phone.
- Finally some nice airport employee said that Lufthansa handles AC baggage claims in DEN (a sign saying that would've been nice...)
- No employee at Lufthansa desk, the United agent at next desk says he's on break
- Lufthansa agent shows up a half hour later, thankfully we were first in line as he took 20-30 min to file our report
- Finally leave DEN ~12 hours after originally planned. Kosher store is now closed so we had to book a hotel in DEN to stay the night to be able to pick up food the next morning
- Luggage never showed up in Colorado in the 8 days that we were there, and tracking online never progressed. Bought everything that we need for 4 people for 8 days, lost a ton of time to shopping.
- Flew back DEN-YYZ 8 days later, flight delayed a bit on tarmac in DEN due to ground stop in YYZ.
- Flight held on runway in YYZ until Canadian customs had capacity to take us in.
- While waiting for our luggage I went to talk to the baggage desk about my outbound luggage and they had me look at a few big piles of luggage in the carousel area and then said that my bag is probably amongst the thousands of bags sitting in the baggage area and would be processed whenever they could. (He did show me on his computer that the bags were scanned as being loaded on a plane to DEN a few days after I flew, but were never scanned as being unloaded in DEN so that probably meant they didn't actually make it onto the plane. Go figure.)
- Waited for 2.5 hours from landing at baggage carousel but my baggage never came out (I had actually seen it being taken off the plane but it never made it through the airport) so now I'm down 6 pieces- 4 from the way there and 2 from the return.
- Line to talk to anyone at baggage claim had now grown really long and my kids were going nuts, so we just left.
- Waited 2 hours on hold with AC to create a file for the luggage from the return flight, guy who answered barely spoke english and made a bunch of mistakes on the report which I ha dto correct online.
- On days 3 and 4 after arrival all of my luggage showed up at home with 4 separate couriers (now 11 days after the outbound flight), except for one piece which had actually been sent to DEN and then came back via Vancouver and got stuck there for a day before coming to YYZ.
- Now I have to work on a claim with AC for everything that we bought in DEN- clothing for 4 people for 8 days wasn't cheap, and all our nonperishable food was in our luggage so I'm going to try to get reimbursed for buying all that again in DEN...
Side story- one of the couriers who delivered my bags told me that he delivered the same bag twice- someone traveled, lost their luggage, got it delivered, and then traveled again a few weeks later, AC lost it again, and he delivered it again.
I've heard from multiple people in Toronto that they're only flying Porter out of the YTZ and completely avoiding YYZ for now.
