While not my favorite Maple Leaf lounge, the Air Canada Transborder Lounge in Toronto Pearson offers food, drink, and a place to spread out ahead of your flight to the United States.
Air Canada Transborder Maple Leaf Lounge Toronto Review
Note my visit to this lounge was in February. The lounge is currently closed due to the pandemic.
Access + Location + Hours
The lounge is located in Terminal 1 just past the security checkpoint. Turn right and take the elevator upstairs to level four. Normal hours are from 4:45AM to 9:00PM. Entrance is granted to business class travelers, Premium Rouge passengers, Maple Leaf or United Club members, and Star Alliance Gold travelers traveling in any cabin of service. Select co-branded credit card holders also have access.
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Seating
This is a large lounge with several sections including chairs, usually clustered together in groups of two or four, along with a few easy chairs with ottomans.
Business Center
A large business center includes cubicles, computers, a printer, and fax machine.
Conference Room
A conference room without a table…that’s interesting. But there’s room for about 10 in here.
Flight Help
The employees at the front desk are happy to help if you run into an issue with your flight.
Magazines
Magazines are still a thing…
Food + Drink
The lounge was 100% self-service during my visit. A selection of food and drink was available from one central buffet area. That included hot and cold dishes, coffee, tea, soft drinks, water, and alcohol.
When the lounge re-opens, at least in the interim, there will be no buffet or self-serve drinks. Instead you can order food and drink via QR code and it be brought directly to your table. There will also be pre-packaged, sealed, to-go items available plus a kid’s menu. More details on Air Canada’s Maple Leaf Lounge @ la table service below:
Children’s Room
A note on the door warns you not to leave your children unattended. This is not the room to dump them in while you go off nowhere else in the lounge! 😉
Showers + Restrooms
Restrooms and showers are available. Although the lounge was not crowded, the showers were occupied during my visit so I don’t have any pictures.
Crowding?
Speaking of crowding–and I know we are in a new era now–there was a warning about crowding at the door:
Have you been in this lounge in the morning hours when it is crowded?
CONCLUSION
While not a lounge I would show up early for, especially if traveling in business class, I found the lounge to be spacious and the food options more than adequate for a full meal. We’ll see what service in this lounge looks like once it re-opens.
How would you review the Air Canada Transborder Lounge in Toronto?
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What a great review on the lounge area in Canada. I have been a member of USO for awhile and this lounge makes that look horrible in comparison!
Matthew, you may have reported on this collision last year between a plane and a fuel tanker at Lester B Pearson. Here is a link to the report released today. The behavior of the passengers leaves me in disbelief!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54016277
At peak, the line for the morning elevator I’ve seen to be like 50+ people. I have no idea how Air Canada plans to fix that for COVID. Lack of stairs has always been a huge problem for this lounge. The space below the lounge is totally open (former security), maybe they have space and a desire to finally make stairs now.
You say this is not one of your favorite maple leaf lounges. Which ones are in your top 3?
YYZ Int’l
YVR Int’l
LAX
AC’s Maple Leaf lounges in YYZ are pretty, but abysmal.
Plugs – Good luck finding them. Laptops, iPhones and more need charging. It’s 2020. I shouldn’t have to unplug a lamp.
View – YYZ was a $5B++ build. Sitting down next to the window could offer one of the most interesting views in commercial aviation. Rather you are looking at a piece of dry-wall painted in 2010.
Elevator – How an extremely large lounge is served by an abysmally small, slow and hot (in summer) elevator is just simply bad planning. The pictured sign has been reprinted every few years, but doesn’t actually solve the problem.
The fact that the ‘kids room’ is sponsored by a major electronic brand (still with a sponsorship sign) and sports a 24″ TV as ‘leading edge’ just confirms that no one is paying attention.
Food/Drink – For the infrequent traveller; the food might seem novel. For the regular traveller, the same snack every Thursday is simply lack of detail.
You say “just past the security checkpoint”, but US preclearance is just past the security checkpoint, and then there’s a ton of construction in the former (years ago) security space, after which is the elevator to the MLL.
Magazines are definitely still a thing! I love them … but not really for traveling. Instead, I take them to the pool or the beach, where I would otherwise worry too much about my iPad getting damaged or stolen. New Yorker is my favorite leisure read. I do enjoy grabbing copies of The Economist from United clubs, too.