Air Canada offers a fairly consistent lounge network throughout its network. At it’s major hub airports, Air Canada offers up to three different lounges in it’s domestic, trans-border and International zones at its major hub airports at Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Today’s visit was to the Montréal Domestic Lounge at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.

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This post is one chapter on our third Round the World trip via South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, the Maldives and India. This trip was redeemed through Air Canada’s Aeroplan and through Starwood Preferred Guest (Marriott Bonvoy) and Hyatt Gold Passport (World of Hyatt) loyalty programs. For more information on how this trip was booked, please see our trip introduction here. For other parts of the trip, please see this index.

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Review: Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge, Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport – Domestic Gates, Montréal Quebec, Canada

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We collected our bags from our Turkish Airlines Business Class Istanbul – Montréal flight and cleared customs. We hit up the Air Canada Connections desk with our luggage in tow. Despite our bags being tagged through to Vancouver (from New Delhi), the agent mentioned that we had not officially been checked in to our Air Canada flight. Thankfully, we still had about fifteen minutes prior to the flight officially closing at about T-75. 

Locating the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge Montréal Domestic:

We headed upstairs via the public side of the arrivals hall and went straight to the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge, or the Salon de Feuille D’Erable as it’s known in French here.

The lounge is located near Gate 1 – 3 of the Montréal Domestic Wing

The lounge is very easily located on the main concourse, and requires a short elevator ride up one level to the lounge area.

Accessing the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge:

The Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge was accessed today courtesy of our business class ticket for our Air Canada Business Class Montréal – Vancouver flight. Unlike in the United States, Air Canada allows for lounge access when flying in domestic or trans-border first class.

You could also get access into the lounge through a business class ticket on Air Canada under the Star Alliance Lounge policy, by purchasing an annual lounge membership, or through select Canadian based credit card memberships.

Inside the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge:

The lounge has expanded and relocated wholly upstairs since my last visit. It now offers a slightly larger space. Despite this, I find this particular location to be among the less inspiring lounges in the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge system, thanks to it’s small footprint and old school “small room” design.

The lounge offers seating in small compartment spaces, which offers a somewhat intimate bunch of areas. While this is great when the lounge isn’t occupied, it doesn’t work so well when the lounge is busy; like it was on our visit today.

Unfortunately, today’s visit was packed with the weekday evening commuter crowd and there weren’t many places to sit. Looking back at these pictures, you can tell North America is on the fast pace of business. Compared to our experiences in India, everyone in North America on the phone or working on whatever leftovers they didn’t get to during the day. It was a pretty busy place today, with not a lot of places to sit.

We ended up settling for a coffee table pair of seats which is usually our last choice since there wasn’t a lot of spare room. It was a somewhat odd ball skinny lounge chair seat in a high density layout. There was nothing like sitting in your neighbours lap, which was unfortunately today’s result. As a result, we ended up chatting with a contractor that was returning from Iraq on our earlier Turkish Airlines flight in business class.

Food and Beverage:

The lounge offered a small buffet, which was situated in the centre of the lounge. As with most Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounges, the food and drink was completely self serve.

The Montreal Maple Leaf Lounge offered the usual salads, cut vegetables and other typical Air Canada offerings. In helping ourselves into a snack, we settled into the usual drink dispenser drinks. 

I went out to find a shower and unfortunately, there weren’t any in the domestic lounge… only the international Maple Leaf Lounge. This was a bit of a minus here as it seems that they are needed the most after arriving off an International flight, considering that Domestic connections within Canada can be over 6 hours long.

My Thoughts on the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge Montréal Domestic:

As we left, I was a little underwhelmed by the Montreal experience. Montreal Pierre Elliott Trudeau really wants to expand to compete with the other eastern airports by having these international flights pass through. It’s often been a favourite of mine to connect through for increased availability of international upgrade opportunities in years past. Unfortunately, their amenities and facilities are really on the small scale in comparison to the larger connection hubs like Toronto Pearson and Chicago O’Hare. Fortunately, it was only one more trans-continental flight until home and the end of another amazing trip!

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If you’ve been through the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge in Montreal Domestic, did you find that the place met your travelling needs ?

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