Montreal's YUL Airport Ranks Among The Continent's Most Stressful & Here's Why It Sucks

Crowded gates, expensive food, delayed flights and endless layovers... A truly stressful airport can bring together some of the worst human experiences into one sprawling, labyrinthine complex of pain and sadness, when all you wanted to do was visit some family for the holidays.

According to a new evaluation by Hawaiian Islands, Montreal's YUL airport ranks among the most stressful airports in North America, putting it in company with some of the most heinous travel experiences available to the Canadian traveller.

YUL is 19th on the list, trailing behind other, more fearsome airports, including the top-ranked most stressful North American airport: Toronto Pearson International, or YYZ if you're cool and hip. According to Hawaiian Islands' research, more than half of all flights from YYZ were delayed between May 26 and July 19 of 2022. This is more than any other airport, not just in North America, but in the entire world.

The rankings determine how stressful an airport is based on its Google reviews, with each airport receiving a percentage grade that represents how many reviews indicated stress. For Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, over 50% of reviews showed signs of stress, which is a lot — but not as much as YYZ, which received 76% stressful reviews. This is a full 6% more than the second-worst North American airport (Albany International in New York).

Common terms used in negative reviews of YYZ were "customs, immigration, layover, embarrassment, and lost luggage." Yeesh.

Of the top ten most stressful airports in North America, a vast majority were American: seven, to be precise. It's reasonable to conclude that domestic Canadian travel is less hideous on average than domestic travel within the United States, so that's a win, at least.