Which Toronto-area airport should I fly from?

Start with the route map, not the airport

Nobody actually chooses an airport. You choose a flight, and the airport comes attached to it. That sounds obvious until you watch a family spend an evening weighing five airports for a trip that only two of them serve on the right dates.

So do the cheap step first: search your dates and destination, and see which of the five even appears. Four of the region's airports fly a selected schedule that shifts by season; only Pearson fields something close to a full network, spread across Terminal 1 and Terminal 3. If your route survives that filter at more than one airport, then the comparison is real and worth ten minutes.

The second filter is the calendar. A flexible traveller can bend dates around a smaller airport's twice-weekly service. A traveller with a Monday meeting or a cruise embarkation cannot, and for them frequency is not a luxury — it is the thing that saves the trip when weather closes in.

• Search the flight first; the airport is the consequence, not the decision
• Smaller airports fly selected routes on seasonal schedules — confirm your dates
• Pearson spreads a full network across Terminal 1 and Terminal 3
• Ask early whether your plans can absorb a twice-weekly schedule

Why Pearson is the honest default

Reach is the first reason. Between the two terminals, YYZ covers domestic, transborder and long-haul flying in volumes the other four cannot approach, which is why most GTA itineraries end up there without much of a debate.

Recovery is the better reason, and it is the one travellers discover the hard way. An airport that flies your destination several times a day can put you on a later departure the same day. An airport that flies it twice a week can only offer sympathy. Thin schedules are inexpensive right up to the moment they fail.

Ground is the third. Pearson sits inside the GTA rather than beyond it, so for most of Mississauga, Etobicoke, Vaughan, Markham and the city itself the run is a short one and the drop-off quotes the flat sedan minimum, $112.67 all-in with gratuity, HST and the card fee already inside. Coming home, the same pickup is $132.91 all-in, which includes the $15.27 airport pickup fee. There is no meter and no surge in either direction.

Even the two-terminal thing, which people worry about, is a solved problem: the free Terminal Link train runs around the clock between Terminal 1, Terminal 3 and Viscount station, so landing at the wrong one costs minutes rather than a taxi.

• Widest route map of the five, across Terminals 1 and 3
• Multiple daily frequencies mean same-day recovery when things break
• Closer-in GTA drop-off: $112.67 all-in, sedan; pickup $132.91 all-in
• Free Terminal Link train connects T1, T3 and Viscount at any hour

What each of the alternatives is actually for

Billy Bishop (YTZ) is a downtown proposition. The airport sits on an island off the foot of Bathurst Street, so no vehicle drives to the terminal door — cars stop at the mainland pavilion and you cross free, either through the enclosed pedestrian tunnel or on the 90-second ferry. If your day starts in the core, that geography is a genuine advantage; if it starts in Newmarket, it quietly is not.

John C. Munro Hamilton (YHM) is at Mount Hope, southwest of Hamilton and roughly 81.9 km from downtown Toronto. It rewards travellers who already live on that side of the lake — Hamilton, Burlington, Niagara, Brantford — and punishes anyone driving past Pearson to reach it. Region of Waterloo (YKF) works the same way for Kitchener-Waterloo, and our answer on YKF versus Pearson goes through that trade in detail.

Buffalo Niagara (BUF) is a different animal, because it is a foreign airport. It joins the shortlist only for US-domestic flying, and only when the saving across your whole party is big enough to pay for a land border in both directions and the documents everyone in the car has to carry.

• YTZ — island terminal off Bathurst Street; tunnel or ferry, both free; best from the core
• YHM — Mount Hope, about 81.9 km from downtown Toronto; natural for the Hamilton-Niagara side
• YKF — Breslau; a short route list that occasionally happens to fit K-W travellers
• BUF — a US airport with a border in front of it; US-domestic trips only

Count the ground leg on both ends before you commit

The airport that looks cheapest on a search page is rarely the cheapest door to door, because the search page prices exactly one half of the journey. Add the drive out, the drive home, and — if you were planning to drive yourself — a week of parking you will pay for whether or not the flight leaves on time.

Real numbers help. A Hamilton address to Pearson is $164.66 all-in for a sedan drop-off and $184.90 coming back the other way. A pickup from YHM into downtown Toronto starts at $235.21 all-in, because it is a longer run with an airport pickup fee inside it. Nothing about those figures is hidden: they include gratuity, 13% HST and the card fee, and they are quoted before you book at /ride/.

Two optional lines are worth knowing while you are comparing. Meet and greet, where the chauffeur walks in and waits with a name board, is a flat $65 and exists on airport pickups only. The airport pickup fee is $15.27 for a sedan, premium sedan, SUV or premium SUV and $35 for a Sprinter Van or stretch limousine, and it never appears on a ride heading to the airport.

• Price both directions — the return leg is where cheap airports get expensive
• Hamilton to Pearson: $164.66 all-in sedan drop-off; $184.90 the other way
• YHM into downtown Toronto: from $235.21 all-in, sedan
• Meet and greet $65, airport pickups only; child seats free on request

Five questions that settle it in about a minute

Run these in order and the answer usually falls out before you have finished the list. They are the same questions our dispatch office asks when a caller is genuinely torn between two airports.

If the answers point at Pearson, stop looking — that is the outcome for most GTA travellers most of the time, and it is not a failure of imagination. If they point somewhere else, they will point clearly, and the ground side of the trip is straightforward to arrange from any of the four airports we serve.

Booking online needs about three hours of lead time before pickup. Inside that window, or for anything last-minute, call (416) 200-5070 or 1-877-200-5070 — the office runs 24/7, which matters when the flight you finally chose leaves at 6 a.m.

• Does this airport fly my route on my dates, at a usable hour?
• If that flight cancels, how soon is the next one to the same place?
• How far is the airport from my door — and from my door at 11 p.m. coming home?
• Does anyone in my party need a passport just to reach the terminal?
• After ground transport both ways, is the saving still a saving?