Review of Air Canada Express flight from Montreal to Toronto in Economy

Hi,

I arrived at Montreal Airport on a sunny cold afternoon and enjoyed some nice apron views before entering the terminal. 

Priority check in at the dedicated Air Canada counters worked quickly due to my Star Alliance Gold status.

Security check was brief that afternoon and soon I was airside passing some nice looking waiting Air Canada planes while heading for the Air Canada Maple Leave Lounge.

The lounge is on the upper floor and provides some very nice apron views and a lot of daylight. It was rather full already but still I found a nice seat in one of the corners.

In general however the whole lounge looks quite old fashioned and in my opinion would be in need for a redesign soon. No self service buffets were available due to covid 19. However some snack and cold & hot drinks could be ordered from service staff at the buffet area.

My selection:

In addition each table has a code where you can order food items to you table via smartphone. I decided to order the Panna Cotta dessert which was fine.

A quick view of the waiting Dash 8 to head down to Toronto Island airport.

Boarding started perfetcly on time in a very orderly manner by groups.

It was interesting to see that large hand luggage has to be placed by cients into this elevator in order to be loaded to the luggage hold of the turboprop - a different process compared to typical apron boarding in Europe for such small planes.

Also completely different than in Europe boarding onto this turboprop took place via airbridge and some kind of bridge solution.

A friendly crew welcomed us onboard and I took my window seat in row 5.

Pitch was totally fine for the short hop.

A look outside.

A quite comprehensive sanitary kid has been provided at the aircraft entrance.

Boarding was soon finished and we were pushed back while a safety demonstration followed.

We taxiied to the runway and departed into nice sunset skies for this 1 hour 05 minutes domestic hop.

The flight was a little bit bumpy in the beginning.

Ca. 15 minutes into the flight a trolley maded its apperance with a large selection of free of charge cold & hot drinks.
You could also pick a small snack from a choice of ca. 5 different ones offered by the friendly crew from a basket.

I had some Ginger Ale and pretzels while my travel companion had some coffee and a muesli bar. 

Quickly we started our descend into Toronto Island Airport and passed the amazing Toronto skyline before touching down on the runway located on Toronto Island.

We docked at some kind of small turboprop airbridge before and disembarked via the aircraft stairs directly walking into the small but very nice airport building. A walking tunnel under the water brings you to mainland in ca. 5 minutes. 

You can also see the layout of Toronto Island airport from the following picture taken the next day from Toronto CN tower.

Thanks for reading,
FlyAlex