The Toronto Slot Machine

CYYZ/Toronto Pearson has construction works planned this Fall (that’s autumn for European folk), which is going to mean some slot restrictions. Here’s the info on it.

What are they doing?

They have been rehabilitating one of the runways – 06L/24R – since April 2022. The overhaul will give it another 30 or so years of life.

So far they’ve sort of done one third of it, and are finishing up the mid section, so just have the end bit to go – but this is the longest section to complete.

After this they’ll be whacking in a lot of LED lights and also working on new bay areas.

You can read all about it here.

Straight out a children’s picture book on airport construction.

What does it mean for traffic?

This is actually their second busiest runway which means fairly big disruption. Normally Toronto runs a dual or triple runway configuration when it gets busy, but since they can’t do that, they’ve been maximising the efficiency of the other two where they can.

With the biggest bit of the construction coming up, they have put some slot restrictions in place to manage the traffic, effective Aug 2.

This will mainly impact Business and General Aviation flights.

First up, there are limited slots between 15:00 and 19:59 local time, each day
This applies to arriving and departing aircraft
BizAv/GenAv flights looking to operate between 06:30 to 12:29 must file a reservation with the Airport Reservation Office Online Coordination System (ARO OCS)

Good news though – any unallocated capacity (with an hour to go) will be available for BizAv/GenAv flights. So you might be able to sneak in last minute (although we wouldn’t recommend depending on it).

ARO OCS?

Find all the info on that here, and if you’re not already registered then do it because it takes 7 days.

Actually that link takes you directly to Toronto’s site on it and there is a bunch of handy info there like who is exempted, how to do it, forms etc.

The Directive.

The official stuff on it can be read here. It says what we said, but you can also find some handy contact info in there too, in case you have any questions on it all.

The Toronto Slot Machine