Toronto Pearson from Satellite View - Airport

Toronto Pearson

✈️ Airports Easy Level (Zoom 12)

📍 Coordinates 43.6777, -79.6248

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"Canada's busiest airport"

About Toronto Pearson

Toronto Pearson International Airport is the primary international airport serving Toronto, its metropolitan area, and the Golden Horseshoe region in Ontario, Canada. It is the busiest airport in Canada. It serves as the main hub for Air Canada and WestJet. The airport is named after Lester B. Pearson, a Nobel Laureate and Prime Minister of Canada.

Pearson has two main terminals: Terminal 1 and Terminal 3. Terminal 1 is the largest airport terminal in Canada and features a distinct airy design. The airport is one of only a few international airports with US Border Preclearance facilities, allowing passengers to clear US customs in Toronto before landing in the US.

The airport operates five runways, allowing for high capacity. It is a major gateway for transatlantic traffic and connects Canada to every inhabited continent. The "Union Pearson Express" train connects the airport to downtown Toronto in 25 minutes.

Toronto Pearson Airport is operated by the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), a not-for-profit corporation without share capital established by the federal government in 1996 to run the airport under a 60-year ground lease from Transport Canada that expires in 2056. All operating profits are reinvested in airport infrastructure rather than distributed to shareholders, an unusual public-benefit governance model shared with only a handful of other Canadian airports including Vancouver and Montreal. Pearson traces its origins to 1937 when the Toronto Harbour Commission purchased 1,400 acres of farmland near the tiny hamlet of Malton, and the airport initially operated as Malton Airport until 1960 when the federal government took over and renamed it Toronto International. The site's ICAO code CYYZ places it in Canada's "CY" region, and the peculiar three-letter IATA code YYZ derives from the pre-airport Malton Post Office's Morse-signal identifier.

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At zoom 12, Toronto Pearson's five runways form an asymmetric pattern with multiple orientations—three parallel east–west runways and two crosswind runways angling northeast. The two large terminals (Terminal 1 and Terminal 3) sit as distinct grey blocks with a central road system between them. Highway 427 runs along the eastern edge and Highway 401—one of the busiest motorways in North America—passes just to the north. The surrounding Mississauga/Toronto suburbs create a dense urban grid on all sides. The flat Ontario terrain and the absence of any significant water body nearby distinguish it from other Great Lakes airports.

Additional features fine-tune the identification. The GO Transit's Kitchener line snakes along the northern airport perimeter and continues southwest toward the Woodbine Racetrack, whose distinctive oval turf course sits 6 kilometres south as a green ellipse amid parking lots. The Rexdale industrial park along the eastern boundary is a dense cluster of blue-roofed warehouses feeding the Canadian Tire distribution centre. The Air Canada Centre of Excellence maintenance base occupies the far northwestern quadrant with its enormous single-aisle and wide-body hangars, and the huge blue-roofed FedEx cargo warehouse at Cell A stands out at the airport's southeastern corner. The Etobicoke Creek's meandering blue ribbon marks a natural boundary between the airport lands and the Mississauga suburb to the west.

📊 Quick Facts

IATA Code YYZ

Passengers/Year ~50 million

Runways 5

Opened 1939

Hub For Air Canada, WestJet

ICAO Code CYYZ

Operator Greater Toronto Airports Authority

Land area 1,867 hectares

🌍 Did You Know?

Toronto Pearson is the busiest airport in Canada, handling over 50 million passengers annually—more than double the next busiest Canadian airport.
The IATA code YYZ comes from the identifier of the nearby Malton radio navigation beacon. The band Rush famously used "YYZ" as a song title, with the intro drum pattern matching the Morse code for Y-Y-Z.
Terminal 1 was completely rebuilt between 2004 and 2007, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill with a soaring curved roof that allows natural light to flood the interior.
Pearson is named after Lester B. Pearson, the 14th Prime Minister of Canada and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Toronto Pearson's Terminal 2 (demolished in 2007) once housed a small chapel called the Interfaith Prayer Room whose stained-glass windows were designed by Canadian artist Ted Harrison; when Terminal 2 was torn down to make room for Terminal 1's expansion, the stained-glass panels were carefully removed and installed in the new interfaith centre at Terminal 1 alongside a plaque commemorating the original 1972 dedication
In August 2005 an Air France Airbus A340-300 (flight AF358 from Paris) overran the end of runway 24L at Toronto Pearson during a severe thunderstorm and burst into flames after crossing into a ravine; miraculously all 297 passengers and 12 crew evacuated safely within 90 seconds, an escape credited to the cabin crew's insistence on turning off carry-on suitcases at the doorways and prioritising older passengers by pre-boarding them
The airport's own dedicated four-terminal fire station houses a fleet of six massive Oshkosh Striker aircraft-rescue-firefighting trucks each with a 45-metre snozzle boom that can pierce through an aircraft fuselage and inject fire suppressant directly into the cabin; the department maintains a mandatory response time of under 3 minutes from alarm to the far end of any runway, and never records a slower time on any drill

Toronto Pearson

About Toronto Pearson

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