Having now operated 3 flights from the new international terminal in YYC I think I'm ready to give it a solid C+ grade. My thoughts:
Design Aesthetics: The ground-side portion of the terminal is, for the most part, really well done. The new check-in hall is big and gives a sense of grandeur. The arrival area incorporates some nice public art and the waterfalls and frosted glass mountains add to the sense that you have officially arrived in the city that serves as the gateway to the rocky mountains. However the ground-side loses points for the corridors on both arrival and departure levels that connect to the original terminal. I find both to be rather dreary as both use multiple shades of greys with essentially no colour. It's the same depressing feeling I get every time I travel through terminal 1 in YYZ.
The air-side portion of the terminal is where I find the design aesthetics dramatically lacking. I can only speak to the International Departures Hall and not the US section however I found the public art lacking and absolutely no effort put into creating a sense of place. In comparison to YVR's international wing that features a stream that runs throughout the area complete with tiny waterfalls, an aquarium, high ceilings and beautiful public art, Calgary's new international departure hall feels more like a reno of an older building instead of a new facility designed to make a statement to international travellers.
The gate areas are just plain awful. Grey vinyl floors with accent colours that give off that cheap, institutional feel. One of my colleagues summed it up best when they said "I feel like I just walked into a more depressing version of Foothills Hospital". No art, no colour and of course limited seating (more on this later).
The arrivals corridor/customs hall is equally dreary with some randomly placed artwork (art is obviously very subjective but the paintings chosen remind me of the paintings done by school children at some of the southern destinations we operate in to) and some maple-leaf wallpaper to denote that you're getting close to Canada Customs. This is accentuated by low ceilings and the same grey vinyl floors to add to the depressing feel. Again it reminds me of arriving at both YYZ terminals 1 & 3 which is not a compliment.
Call to Gate: The system definitely is not working as it should and I think a large part of that is the poor design of the terminal building. As I mentioned previously, there is absolutely no effort put into creating a 'sense of place' to encourage passengers to stay in the main holding area. Once you pass through security you go through a duty free shop. I was actually surprised at how small and cramped the duty free shop felt and I couldn't imagine how busy it will get if there are several wide-body departures leaving close together.
Travellers then exit the duty-free and come face to face with the info desk with the flight info boards. To your right you can see gates 70/71 that have a few seats and some public art as well as the hallway that leads to gates 76/77/78/70. To your left is the food court area. It features a low ceiling and no public art... essentially absolutely nothing to draw you in. I can easily see why people look left, then right and shrug and just head out towards the gate area to see if they come across their flight.
For people that make the decision to head left towards the food court and the shopping area, the building design still doesn't make it intuitive that this area serves as the main holding room where you're supposed to spend your time. Again the hallway features a low ceiling with food options on your left and shops on your right. The seating area is actually in behind the shops and feels more like some seats have been placed along the glass instead of being the main hold room seating area for the terminal. From security onwards the whole area feels like the airport was trying to cram things in to a limited space which is quite odd considering it's a brand new building.
In my opinion if the airport wanted to increase the odds of call to gate working, passengers should have exited the duty free shop and walked right into a large seating hall with higher ceilings, public art and place-making items such as water features and windows. The food and shopping should have then been laid out along the perimeter of this space with the corridors to the gate areas requiring you to pass beyond the natural boundaries created by the shops. This is the layout that seems to be adopted by every major European airport I've travelled to that makes use of the call to gate system and I think plays a large role in encouraging people not to venture beyond the main holding area. Calgary has definitely missed the mark in this aspect and it virtually impossible to change at this point.
Even if people followed the call to gate system as they're meant to, I feel the gate areas are still severely lacking in seating and I can see where the passenger complaints come from. All three flights I've operated out of the new terminal building left from the 76/77/78/78 gate areas. Map for Reference:
http://www.yyc.com/en-us/travellerinfo/maps.aspx At the time of our departure there were 2 other flights leaving around the same time. Three 737-800s mean approximately 450 people waiting to board the flights from an area that has seating for maybe 60.
Even if a traveller arrives at the gate area at the time they're meant to, by the time the pre-boarding announcements are made followed by priority boarding and assisted boarding I would guess that the average traveller is faced with a ten minute wait at the gate area prior to boarding. If the traveller is seated in one of the last zones to board this wait is probably closer to twenty minutes. Now twenty minutes of standing around might not seem like much but the crowds of people who are sprawled out on the floor every day at the airport seem to suggest otherwise. The kicker and what I think leads to the complaints is that these gate areas could easily accommodate more seating... the space is there... however the airport has evidently decided not to put the seats there.
CATSA Plus: I have to say that I was very critical of the airport adopting the CATSA Plus system for the international terminal after having very poor experiences with it as it was trialed at Terminal 3 in YYZ. I have to take it back as the way as it's been implemented in YYC has addressed most of the issues that I had with the system and security has been a breeze each time I've used it. The one issue that I still have with the system is that your personal possessions can easily end up on the opposite side of security while you're still loading up trays and that can cause some anxiety but that can easily be mitigated by simply making sure your laptop and possessions are in the very last bin you send through.
Canada Customs Hall: This is another area of the new terminal that gets a failing grade. The customs hall actually feels smaller than the previous one however that may just be a perception thing. Either way I can't see how the area will handle the passenger loads if the international terminal gets anywhere close to capacity. The three times I've arrived has been at off-peak times with only a few flights arriving around the same time, none of which were wide-body aircraft. Upon approaching the customs hall, passengers were confronted with a blob of people. I say a blob because it sort of resembled a line but because of the lack of signs directing travellers on where to enter the customs hall people were just kind of congregating together in the hall.
The fact that the custom hall lacks depth and forces people to form lines in the long hallways that serve as approaches to the hall leads me to believe that that is the way the new terminal was designed to be used. But the lack of signage and the fact that the customs hall is around a 90 degree corner prevents people from determining where they should be lining up to expedite their processing through customs. Creating stanchions that run the length of the hall approaching customs will help with this problem provided they are combined with proper signage so that connecting/nexus/crew/and regular arriving passengers can form separate lines early on. That being said, I don't think this will do anything to curb the human perception that if you're standing in a hallway outside of the room you want to be in, you perceive that the room is over capacity and you feel like you're in for a long wait. If you're waiting inside the room you want to be in, even if the line is identical to the one in the hall, you feel as if you're closer to your destination and you can see the progress you're making which seems to lower the anxiety/frustration felt.
Water Fountains: The lack of water fountains in the departures area has already been well discussed and I think the fact that the airport authority's "solution" still requires people to have an empty bottle with them to fill up shows just how little the airport authority cares about the passengers passing through YYC. The one thing that I feel has been over-looked so far in this debate is the fact that the no water fountain issue also applies to the international arrivals area.
In my mind this is even worse as unlike the departures area where passengers can at least purchase a drink if they feel they need one, there is absolutely no alternative for arriving passengers to turn to if they are thirsty. This is compounded by the fact that drink service on flights typically ends 30 minutes prior to landing. This is followed by 10 minutes taxi time, 10 minutes to deplane, 15 minutes to get through customs, and a potential wait for baggage meaning that the average arriving passenger will have to go over an hour without any access to drinking water. To me this is completely unacceptable and not the welcome to Canada we should be showing people. Hopefully the airport authority comes to their senses with this and installs water fountains in the approach to the customs hall and in the international baggage hall.
Overall I'm obviously rather disappointed with the new terminal, especially given the potential of what it could have been. What disappoints me even more is that I think a lot of these issues are designed in to the building and can't be easily fixed. Hopefully the improvements that can be made are made quickly but I'm not going to hold my breath.
Prev
Linear Mode
