Ottawa International Airport

Decent free short term parking close by. Airport viewing parking about 3 or 4 minutes from pick up area.

Pretty good. Still needs more/clearer signage. Thank goodness for Google Maps! ....and now with construction 🚧 by the airport and in Ottawa on main thoroghfares....🙄 give yourself extra time.

Review is for Zak's Diner which doesn't yet appear on Google maps as of March 2026. Restaurant lists Ice Cream on their features board, and sells milkshakes made from ice cream in 3 flavours, yet they refuse to sell ice cream. Manager could not accommodate nor improvise on my request so I had no recourse but to leave with my two disappointed children.

A thing that pleasantly surprised was that the devices did not have to be taken out, the new scanning machines see through the carryon bag full of electronics and passengers just put their carryon into the scanner, it slides through and you pick it up at the end. Thats all!! Cool.

A clean and well organized international airport with a calm and efficient atmosphere. The layout is easy to navigate, security and check-in processes are generally smooth, and staff are helpful. There are decent food options, shops, and comfortable seating areas, making travel more pleasant. Overall, a reliable and convenient airport for both domestic and international flights.

The airport layout itself is nice, and they have decent food options. However, I've had to fly here many times and most of those flights have had arrival and departure delays all caused by ground crew shortages. One of those delays was us sitting in the plane at the gate waiting for the ground crew to rearrange the luggage in the plane for *2 hours.* Plan your flight to experience a delay if you ever have a layover flight involving Ottawa as an origin or destination.

Edit Jan 2026: my most recent flight was Murphy's law. Delays for 3 different reasons including the ground crew, and on top of that, lost 1 of my 2 checked luggages, and I wasn't the only one! About a third of the plane was missing luggage. This airport is chaos incarnate.

One of the best Airports wich i visit. Very clean and tidy.

Sitting in the airplane for 1hr, waiting for port. And sitting in another airplane for 1hr to wait for push out.

Nice Airport, restaurants close a bit early, however

We arrived 3 hours early. Going through security was a nightmare. Extremely long lineups all being feed through one narrow entrance. They rescanned multiple times and machines didn't seem to show where the issue was. Took us well over an hour to get through security. Definitely not flying through Ottawa again.

I found the airport easy enough to navigate. The restaurants were good but the luggage screening was unbelievably slow. Overall feel and esthetics were underwhelming comperative to international airports nationally or around the globe.

Staff are kind and helpful but, this airport is severely understaffed. 45+ minutes of waiting on the plane because there isn’t enough staff to accommodate. Plus the over an hour wait for baggage, I missed my connecting flight due to these issues. Keep in mind that if you have a connecting flight here you have to pick up your baggage and recheck it in, this is the first airport I’ve been to that this is the case. If possible, plan for your layovers to be in Montreal or Toronto, 1000x faster service. I would also like to add that my baggage came out broken.

Worlds slowest baggage claim, been waiting for over an hour at 2am and no bags in sight
Edit: now 3am no bags

Takes too long for luggage. If you are travelling with a carry-on, you will be quick.

Cozy, comfortable, easy to move around. Great food options.