Layover in Toronto YYZ
 

We will have a 1 hr 8 minute layover in YYZ, 9:07-10:15 PM. Incoming on Air Canada Express. Outgoing on Air Canada Rouge. A Canadian friend says that might be calling it close. Anyone have experience there? Do you agree the schedule is a little tight? Thanks for any input & info.

As a general rule of thumb most savvy travelers will tell you that a 1 hour connection in any major airport is “cutting it close”.

There’s just no wiggle room. If your inbound flight arrives on time you should make it but if the inbound flight is delayed for any reason you’ll need a back-up plan.

Remember, your connecting flight will begin boarding about 30 minutes prior to scheduled take off and sometimes the gate agents stop the boarding process 5 to 10 minutes before departure. There’s also no way to predict how far apart your arrival and departure gates will be. They could be right near each other or at the opposite ends of the terminal.

If you are a risk taker you’ll probably be fine. If you are like me, I prefer a minimum 90 connection time for domestic flights and 2 hours when connecting from an international flights to a domestic flight.

You can call up the Pearson airport website to see the layout of terminals and use its Connections section to calculate your path. There can be a fair trudge from your landing point to the part of Terminal 1 where most Air Canada trans-Atlantic flights depart,if that is indeed your itinerary. Your situation may be different (and gates can always change at the last minute). As well, the feeder flights at the end of the day sometimes accumulate delays caused elsewhere. Lots of doubts in this reply; air travel is full of uncertainty and that is why a longer transfer time is safer..
https://torontopearson.com/#

Thanks for the responses. I was able to change our flights without fees. We now have a nice almost 4 hour layover.

Good thing you changed your flights. We always avoid Toronto, after two really bad experiences there.
One time, on our way to Europe, the airport could not find our luggage and told us it would 'probably' arrive in Europe with us. We were extremely lucky that our luggage did find us.
The other time, our connecting flight was cancelled at the last minute, as we were boarding. It was a complete circus at that airport. We stood in multiple lines to get re-booked, and to get food/lodging/ground transportation vouchers. Then we stood in line for our luggage, which they could NOT find, so we spent the night without it, hoping they'd find it by morning. Then, the next morning we returned to the airport and stood in multiple lines again. The kiosks were down, for checking into flights, and the security line was the longest we'd ever seen.

Unless I was going through customs, I would have kept the hour and eight minute layover versus a four hour layover.

Tom42 I think we have to go through customs since we're flying in from the USA. Could be wrong. A good thing is we'll have a chance to have a meal before our 10:15 pm departure for Barcelona.

We had three hours to connect in Toronto from Chicago onward to Tokyo but missed it due to a weather delay. We went the next day but missed day in Tokyo.