At Pearson airport how far is it from security to the boarding gates?

April 12, 2025 11:31 AM

At Pearson airport (Toronto YYZ), how far is it to walk from the security check-in (or baggage drop-off and check-in for that matter) to one of the farthest gates (e.g., Gates E70-E80, or Gates F60-F70) in Terminal 1?

Can I assume the reverse distance is roughly the same?

And would the equivalent distances be the same at Terminal 3 (C Gates)?

Just curious. It seems to be highly protected (or uninteresting?) information. None of the "complete guides" give it. And none of the maps have a scale.

I would rather have actual distances than travel times, because we all walk at a different pace.

Thanks.

Extra question add-on: what are these distances (check-in to boarding the airplane) at London Heathrow?

posted by feelinggood to Travel & Transportation around Toronto, ON (6 answers total)

Are you flying domestic or international?

It's about 500 m from the centre of T1 to Gate D80. From D51 to D41 (the leftmost sticky-out arm of T1) is about 230 m. The middle sticky-out arm (F59-E75) is about 370 m long. This isn't counting the huge long multi-level double-backs you have to do when coming back, so the reverse distance can be easily double that (esp if landing internationally).

T3 is smaller, and may have some circuitous paths. Been a while since I was there. Haven't been in Heathrow since 2008 or so, and that's too recent.

I measured distances using ACME Planimeter. It's really only useful for single straight line measure
posted by scruss at 12:25 PM on April 12 [2 favorites]

Air canada has an interactive map that is quite awkward to use but displays distance in yards

Here's an example from Air Canada checkin to gate E78 is 980 yards or 896 meters
posted by yyz at 12:55 PM on April 12 [1 favorite]

A tentative answer: 850 meters on foot, which is the distance between the first door at T1 after the Three Inuksuit sculpture on the departures level arriving by car and gate E75, which looks to be the furthest away from that door.

To get to this number:

- On mobile, I went to Terminal 1 at Pearson Airport over on OpenStreetMap and saw red dashed lines indicating “footways”, or pedestrian paths.

- I long-pressed on gate E75, which looked to be the furthest away from the central check-in terminal area, and selected “directions to here”, then looked for the furthest-away entrance to the departures level, which looked like it was the one next to the sculpture, and selected “directions from here”.

- In the hamburger menu, I selected the walking-man icon to change the directions to pedestrian mode, and the site duly calculated this route.

At Terminal 3, using the same method, it appears the longest distance between street and gate is 961 meters from the furthest-east entrance door of Terminal 3 to gate B2a, which is in the separate pier building to the main building’s southwest.

At Heathrow, using the same method is possible, but the terminals vary dramatically in their architectural form; at Terminal 5, you are encouraged to use a train underground to link the main building to the furthest satellite concourse, but it is possible to walk the full distance from the entrance to gate C52, a length of over 1.3 kilometers, while at Terminal 4, the longest distance looks to be just 605 meters, from gate 403 to the furthest-away terminal entrance.
posted by mdonley at 12:58 PM on April 12

Response by poster: Very clever, mdonley, and very helpful. You have opened up whole new world for me.

Thank you, scruss -- this will take more work. But very helpful.
posted by feelinggood at 2:30 PM on April 12 [1 favorite]

One important thing to know is that while the F concourse "annex" in Terminal 1 (gates F84–99) looks to be about the same distance from the central terminal on the map, it takes longer than you'd expect to get there because there are no moving walkways in that part of the building. Those gates are primarily (exclusively?) used for flights to & from mid-sized US cities like Hartford, Raleigh, Milwaukee, etc. so depending on where you're flying this may be moot.
posted by Johnny Assay at 5:53 AM on April 13

Also, concerning the reverse distances: they'll be roughly the same but not identical, particularly if you're flying internationally. If you have to clear Canada customs and/or US preclearance you'll be routed differently in each direction, and sometimes the route can be a little more circuitous than you'd expect. However, it seems like the exact routing varies (I think it depends on what other flights are arriving/departing around the same time and what doors they can close off), so it's hard to predict with any degree of accuracy.
posted by Johnny Assay at 5:58 AM on April 13