Quote:
Originally Posted by outoftheice
I've always felt the opposite.... the customs hall and the boarding lounges are ridiculously small for a brand new terminal that was built with dreams of international wide-body growth. YYC will be a miserable experience for passengers flying in and out on Westjet’s Dreamliners, despite the fact they are using an almost brand new facility.
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Sadly very true.
While it’s aesthetically quite nice, the new terminal is a monument to incompetent design. They never bothered to take into account fundamental things like user behaviour, passenger flows or - apparently - growth.
Pre-board screening is oddly cramped right before and after the screening machines — with awkward, makeshift routing of people from the front of the line to the unpacking stations, nowhere near enough space to repack, and space to put shoes back on was just an afterthought.
The CBSA primary inspection space for arriving passengers is an overly crammed sea of kiosks with unnecessarily confusing paths for users. And just a few years in, it often maxes out — forcing people to stand in the approach ramps from the gates to wait. Room for growth? Zip.
The unbelievably bad idea to create a “call to gate” design in departures meant the space was intentionally created to not have any seating at the gates. Once they understood (after opening) that pretty much every airline passenger has a strong desire to find their gate and wait there — they crammed in a few banks of seats where they could. But there’s nowhere near enough. The needed seating now blocks foot traffic there. And there’s no power available at the seating for passengers to charge electronics … in a brand new terminal whose aircraft almost all require BYOD.
Boarding area at the gates? In addition to not recognizing the universal desire of passengers to wait at their gate prior to boarding, they also didn’t account for the fact that airlines board by zones — and most often create separate queues by zone at each gate. Especially international carriers. And the bigger the plane, the bigger the desire to create multiple queues. European carriers will often create 5 queues at each gate - one per boarding zone - that’s in addition to the queue to get to the counter to get help from an agent. The space for that in the new building? Zip. Every airline will still roll out their zone markers (most here only use two lanes, because there’s no space to do much else).
One major pain point… The D gates in the high 70s are a constant gong show — especially because they’re the gates often frequented by the bigger aircraft. When those gates are all in use, boarding is utter chaos. It’s like the concourse at the Saddledome during an intermission, with queues overlapping and blocking other queues. It’s nuts. I cringe when I hear gate agents trying to explain where to board and asking people to stay back from the gate until their zone is called — when there’s no room to stand anywhere else. It’s bad enough when it’s all 737s there. Toss in a couple of 787s or a 767 or a big Airbus? The space does not function. It’s broken.
Or the transborder E gates in the low 70s? Who was the designer or architect who said “let’s take multiple gates, where people will be boarding at the same time, and squish them all together into one mega-gate with multiple counters and row upon row of stanchions all beside each other leading to those counters”? From a user perspective, the space does not work. It’s complicated. It’s stress-inducing. I imagine it must be a huge PITA for airline staff too.
And worst of all — the connection between the new terminal and the old domestic terminal. In one teeny area, there’s a big U-turn for the golf carts, a bunch of foot traffic between domestic and international, all on top of a couple of horrendously poorly though out domestic gates (the C70s). The whole area just looks and feels … nonsensical. On top of that, the access between the domestic and intl terminals is nothing more than a tiny little door and a narrow hallway. It’s more like entering a secret speakeasy than making a major international transfer.
Is it better than the old B gate U.S. concourse? Absolutely. Is it what a major international airport built in 2016 should be? Nope. Is it expandable or scalable for the future? That seems unlikely. Most of the design problems in the current building are so deeply embedded that they’re not fixable, but they’ll probably restrict future growth.
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