Nearly four months after making its debut, San Diego International Airport’s Terminal 1 has welcomed two Canadian airlines, bringing to seven the number of carriers now operating at the expanded facility.
Air Canada and WestJet, which had been operating out of Terminal 2, relocated this week to the new 19-gate Terminal 1, which will eventually expand to 30 gates once the nearly $4 billion project is complete in 2028. That same year, Delta Airlines, now housed in Terminal 2, will move over to Terminal 1 where it will also have a new Sky Club lounge, now in the planning phase.
Ticket counters for the Canadian airlines are in the East lobby of the terminal’s Ticket Hall. For departing flights, Air Canada will operate from Gates 116 and 117, and WestJet will use Gate 118.
The new Terminal 1 is largely reserved for domestic travel, with Southwest Airlines operating the vast majority of flights. Now that the two Canadian airlines have moved into the terminal, airport officials are reminding passengers traveling internationally that a valid passport is required.
Those travelers will use the same Biometric Exit Cameras as international passengers in Terminal 2. For arriving passengers, they are pre-cleared for U.S. entry if coming from Calgary, Toronto, Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Victoria and Winnipeg.
Airport officials said the relocation of the two airlines was designed to make their operations more efficient and help balance passenger loads in the two terminals.
Both airlines began serving the San Diego airport in 2005, but WestJet suspended service later that year and didn’t return until June of 2009, said airport spokesperson Nicole Hall. Both Air Canada and WestJet ended their operations shortly after the start of the pandemic in 2020 but resumed service in late 2021, she said.
Air Canada operates between three and five flights per day, depending on the season. It flies nonstop to Toronto and Vancouver year-round and to Montreal during the summer.
WestJet has between one and two flights daily and flies to Calgary year-round and to Vancouver during the summer season.
While the full complement of new Terminal 1 gates will be completed in 2028, in the interim, three more will arrive a bit sooner — two more will be operational by this May, and a third one will come in the spring 2027.