· 2 min read
Terminal 1 or Terminal 3: where your chauffeur actually meets you at Pearson
Pearson has two terminals, several arrivals halls and a limousine staging area most passengers never see. Here is what actually happens between your wheels touching down and the car door closing.
Toronto Pearson handles the great majority of our airport work, and the single most common question we are asked is the simplest one: where will the car be? The honest answer is that it depends on your terminal, whether you are clearing customs, and which of the two meeting options you chose when you booked.
The two options, and why the choice matters
Every Pearson booking is set up as either a meet-and-greet or a curbside pickup. A meet-and-greet means your chauffeur parks, walks into the terminal, and waits in the arrivals hall holding a name board. A curbside pickup means the chauffeur waits in the staging area and drives to the arrivals door when you text or call to say you are ready to walk out.
Meet-and-greet is the right choice on a first visit, with children, with a lot of luggage, or when someone is arriving who you want looked after. Curbside is faster and slightly cheaper, and it is what most frequent flyers pick — you know the airport, you have hand luggage only, and you would rather not have anyone standing about.
Terminal 1
Terminal 1 handles Air Canada, its Star Alliance partners and most international arrivals. If you are arriving from outside Canada you will clear customs and come out into the international arrivals area, and that is where your chauffeur will be waiting with the board. Domestic and transborder arrivals come out elsewhere in the same building, so the terminal alone is not enough information — this is exactly why we ask for the flight number rather than just a time.
Terminal 3
Terminal 3 handles most other carriers, including a large share of leisure and charter traffic. The arrivals level meeting point is more compact than Terminal 1, which in practice makes it easier to find each other. The same rule applies: international arrivals appear after customs, domestic arrivals do not.
The part passengers never see
Pearson has a designated staging area for limousines and pre-booked ground transport. Your chauffeur waits there rather than circling the terminal loop, which is why a properly booked car can be at the door within a couple of minutes of your call rather than fifteen. It is also why a chauffeur booking behaves differently from hailing something on arrival: the vehicle is already on the airport, already assigned to you, and already tracking your flight.
What happens when the flight is late
Nothing, and it costs nothing. The booking is matched to the live flight number, so the dispatch time moves with the aircraft. A three-hour delay simply means the chauffeur is dispatched three hours later. Free waiting time — which is longer on international arrivals than domestic, for the obvious reason that customs and baggage are unpredictable — starts when you land, not when you were scheduled to.
Two things worth telling us
- The flight number, always. Without it we are guessing, and guessing is what goes wrong.
- The luggage. Four passengers with four large cases do not fit in a sedan, and the kerb at Pearson is the worst possible place to discover that.
Everything else — which terminal, which door, whether you are through customs yet — we can work out from the flight. That is the job.
