Review of Air Transat flight from Toronto to Montreal in Economy

one last hop

Hey guys and welcome to another Flight Report!

This FR will be the penultimate one for my trip to Canada and will be my last domestic flight before I fly back to Europe from Montreal. There really isn't any reason why I chose Air Transat other than the fact that they were the cheapest option for me at around CA$95 (~€65/US$70) including seat selection. I didn't pay for checked luggage for this flight and a cabin bag is included along with an under-seat bag.

From 2023, I aim to offset all of my CO2 emission from flights. All emissions are calculated using the ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator and I will be funding projects approved by The Gold Standard. The CO2 output for this flight is:

YYZ-YUL: 68kg
Total for 2023 (so far): 1447kg

Toronto pearson Airport (yyz)

Because I had stuff to do earlier in the day, I only arrived at the airport around 2 hours before departure (like most people). This meant that I didn't get to take as many photos as I would've normally. However, it doesn't really matter as I've flown out of Pearson Terminal 3 earlier in my trip so I'd probably end up taking the same photos again anyway. If you'd like to have a more in-depth look into the airport, check out my Porter review here!

Like last time, the bus dropped me off in Terminal 1 so I had to get the free train to Terminal 3, where Air Transat flights depart from.

View from the station.

The station itself.

The check-in area.

The Air Transat check-in desks are right at the end of the building, near domestic/non-US departures. As you can see, there weren't any queues for check-in however there were some confusion as I used the self-service check-in kiosks which didn't print a boarding pass for some reason. This meant that I had to go to the counter anyway.

Security was, once again, very efficient. There's much less people in the evening compared to the morning so I was through in under 10 minutes.

A view of the gates where our flight would depart from.

View of the apron from the gates, including 2 A330s of Air Transat and Aer Lingus parked at the C gates.

Another photo of the apron, Toronto is really nice for planespotting.

View from the other side of the pier.

the flight

While the airport is good for planespotting, it wasn't for our plane as it was parked right at the end of the pier. This is the best photo I can get sadly.

However, I was (once again) fortunate enough to photograph the plane during my planespotting session in Montreal a day later. So here's a much better photo of her:

Some info about our plane:

Type: Airbus A321
Registration: C-GEZX
First flight: 2 August 2016
Age: ~7 years

First delivered to the now defunct WOW Air, she flew for the Icelandic carrier until their demise in 2019. The plane was then set to go to British carrier Thomas Cook as G-TCDS but was never delivered as Thomas Cook also ceased operations in late 2019. Finally, she was delivered to Air Transat in November 2019 while retaining her yellow engines to this day. 

Flight time today will be under an hour and here is our route:

Air Transat's seats:

The tray table and seat-back pockets.

The legroom - actually really, really good. One of the best I've had. 

All the seats recline, which is nice.

There is also a pair of USB ports in front of each seat.

View out the window.

Pushback around 10 minutes late.

Taxiing past all the heavies.

A Turkish Airlines Boeing 777-300ER (TC-JJS) arriving from Istanbul (IST)

Taking off from runway 24R. Bye bye Ontario!

Good views of Mississauga and Brampton on takeoff.

A right turn brings over Lake Ontario.

Climbing through the clouds.

Immediately after takeoff, the crew came around with drinks. I went with apple juice.

The 2 cup wedges are a really nice feature!

Let's have a look at the contents of the seat-back pocket. It includes:

- A safety card

- An air-sickness bag

- A menu

Air Transat offers a BOB service for flights over an hour long.

Fairly thick clouds over Ontario today.

Air Transat also offers an IFE system that is available on your phone after connecting to their Wi-Fi.

With it being a short flight, I only got a quick glance at everything. It looks like there's a fairly decent selection of TV shows, movies and games available. It's definitely enough for a short flight across North America.

There is also an inflight map available, which wasn't working for my flight.

The menu is also available to view online.

Starting our descent into Montreal.

Over the Lake of Two Mountains.

Great views of the area surrounding Montreal.

View of Montreal Trudeau airport from the air.

Over the Greater Montreal area.

Another view of the airport. If you look really carefully, you'll see another plane on final on the bottom right.

Over Downtown Monreal with a sunset in the background.

Our approach involved a loop over Downtown, which gave us some really nice views.

Over the St Lawrence River.

Finally, welcome to Montreal! We landed around 20 minutes late.

Parked next to an Air Canada A330.

Montreal trudeau airport (yul)

Like with all airports, arriving domestic passengers are deposited inside the departures area.

The baggage reclaim area.

The arrivals area on the ground floor.

That concludes my last domestic flight in Canada. My next (and final) FR in this series will cover the long-haul flight back to Europe, see you there!