Where do international arrivals come out at Pearson — Terminal 1 vs Terminal 3?

First: which terminal your flight actually reaches

The airline decides the building. Air Canada and its Star Alliance partners — United, Lufthansa, Turkish, Air India among them — bring international arrivals into Terminal 1; WestJet, Air Transat, Delta, American, British Airways and most other overseas carriers use Terminal 3. Your booking confirmation states it, and anyone meeting you should know it before driving.

One wrinkle catches connecting passengers: if your journey from abroad connects through another Canadian airport — Vancouver or Montreal, say — you clear customs there, at your first point of entry, and land at Pearson as a domestic arrival. Different doors, faster timeline, and the flight number that matters for a pickup is the final Pearson-bound leg.

Flights arriving from the United States land as international at Pearson too — US preclearance only works in the departing direction — so a New York or Chicago arrival walks the same customs route as one from London.

• Terminal 1: Air Canada + Star Alliance international arrivals
• Terminal 3: WestJet, Air Transat, Delta, American, BA and most others
• Connected through YVR/YUL? You cleared customs there — domestic exit at Pearson
• Arrivals from the US clear Canadian customs here — international route

The walk: aircraft to the public hall

Both terminals run the same sequence. You deplane and follow the arrivals flow to Canadian border control, where kiosks and eGates handle the declaration for most travellers before an officer interaction. From there it's down to the carousels for checked bags, then through the customs exit.

That exit matters more than people expect: the doors are one-way. Once you step into the public hall you cannot go back for the bag you forgot at the carousel, so do your count — passport, phone, every case — before you walk through.

On the public side, you're in the ground-level arrivals hall, where the waiting crowd lines the exit: families, name signs, drivers. It's the same architecture at Terminal 1 and Terminal 3, so 'clear customs, exit into the hall, look for your greeting' describes both buildings.

• Sequence at both terminals: border control → baggage → customs exit → public hall
• The customs doors are one-way — count your bags before exiting
• Greeters and name signs wait in the ground-level public hall

Where your chauffeur fits into that hall

With meet & greet — a $65 add-on many international arrivals consider the point of the exercise — the chauffeur is already inside the hall as you exit, holding a sign with your name, and walks you and your luggage to the car. No navigation, no local SIM, no guessing which exit-door crowd to scan.

On a standard pickup, the system works through your phone: the flight is tracked, and once you're on the ground a text lays out exactly where to meet at the arrivals level. You clear formalities at your own pace — roughly an hour of waiting after touchdown is already part of the service.

Either way, the booking's flight number is doing the quiet work. A late arrival over the Atlantic re-times the pickup automatically; nobody is watching a curb clock while you're still at the carousel.

Making an international arrival effortless

Book the pickup under the flight number that physically lands at Pearson — the final leg, not the first flight of a multi-stop itinerary. Note the terminal follows from that flight's airline automatically, so there's nothing extra to specify.

Consider who's landing. Meet & greet earns its $65 for first visits, non-English-speaking relatives, students arriving alone and anyone landing after a red-eye with a phone at four percent. Confident travellers with working data do fine on texted instructions.

And if the day goes sideways — a missed connection, an airline rebooking — the pickup moves with one update: the self-serve link handles changes up to 12 hours out, and the 24/7 phone line covers everything closer.

• Book with the final Pearson-bound flight number — terminal follows automatically
• Meet & greet for first-timers and phone-dead arrivals; texts for the confident
• Rebooked flight? One update via link or phone re-points the pickup