Another Side of Vancouver Airport: Age, Workspace, and the People I Saw
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Beyond the wayfinding problem that led me into the wrong NEXUS line, my connection at Vancouver International Airport left me with several observations unrelated to signs. I noticed an older-looking mix of people, a departures area that offered almost nowhere to work, and a visible contrast between people in Vancouver and Texas. This post records those observations. The full account of the NEXUS incident is in How I “Reasonably” Ended Up in the Wrong NEXUS Line at YVR.
Author: Koutian Wu; GitHub: ktwu01
The age distribution stood out to me
During this trip, I noticed something else that caught my attention. Across the Air Canada flights and service areas I passed through, and among the employees and passengers I saw at YVR, the overall age distribution appeared older. Based only on what I saw, people under 30 may have made up no more than a quarter of the group around me.
This was not a survey. I did not count individuals, and I did not know anyone’s actual age. The sample was also shaped by the routes, time of day, fares, reasons for travel, and the parts of the airport I happened to pass through. Early-morning trans-Pacific flights and airport connection areas are clearly not representative samples of Canadian society. An older workforce does not imply lower efficiency either. Experienced employees may be more familiar with unusual situations.
The visual impression was still worth recording because it raised a question: what has changed in frontline airport service? No one was present to help at a key decision point. That could reflect scheduling or staffing shortages, a decision to concentrate staff at counters, or a slower local service culture. It could also have been specific to my route and time of day, with no causal connection to age at all.
What I observed was that an apparently older age mix and a lack of visible help at an important junction occurred at the same time. I cannot conclude that the former caused the latter. The question worth investigating is whether staffing, job design, and the wayfinding system compensate for one another. If an airport reduces the number of roaming employees, its fixed signs need to carry more of the explanatory burden. If the signs require extensive background knowledge, travelers need somewhere nearby to ask a person.
The airport seemed to assume passengers would not work
Another part of YVR that I found hard to understand was the near absence of workspace in the U.S. departures area. In the sections where I walked and looked for seating, I saw almost no proper worktables. Most seating consisted of ordinary benches and chairs. Power outlets were scarce. When I finally found a seat with outlets, at least some of the ones I personally tried supplied no power. I inserted the plug and nothing happened.
The space and people’s behavior seemed to reinforce each other. I saw few passengers doing focused work, and the airport did not provide the basic setup needed to open a laptop, plug it in, and work for several hours. For someone facing a long connection who needs to answer email or finish a task, this was more than a small inconvenience. The space did not appear to treat working as an ordinary use case.
My experience at Houston’s airports has been the opposite. In the areas I have passed through in Houston, workstations and tables are easy to find. Travelers can readily find a place to set down a laptop, charge devices, and get things done. The layout assumes that many people will keep working during a connection. YVR felt as if sitting, waiting, chatting, or doing nothing were all expected, while anyone who wanted to work had to search for a barely usable corner.
I also did not notice the advertisements for AI companies, products, or related technology that I often see in other airports. The presence of AI branding in an airport depends mainly on advertisers, the terminal, and the time of observation. It says little about a city’s technical capabilities. Still, the combination of few people working, few tables, scarce or nonfunctional outlets, and no visible AI advertising gave the space a distinct atmosphere.
My immediate impression was that the pace of life and service felt so relaxed that it crossed into disorder and became difficult to understand. This remained one person’s experience in one departures area at one time. It cannot describe everyone in Vancouver or Canada. The more precise object of criticism is the airport’s design. By choosing which activities receive tables, power, and assistance, the airport also chooses how it expects a “normal passenger” to spend their time.
Why did the “Americans” I saw in Vancouver look so different from Texans?
After entering the U.S. preclearance area, I had another immediate impression. The U.S.-bound travelers I saw in Vancouver looked different from the people I encounter in daily life in Texas, across faces, apparent ages, clothing, and general demeanor. The people I saw on Canada’s West Coast also seemed different from those I regularly see in Texas.
More precisely, the people at YVR were travelers preparing to go to the United States. Their location did not establish that they were U.S. citizens. They could have included Canadians, Americans, and people from other countries. Citizenship and state residency also do not come with a fixed appearance.
The difference I noticed was more likely shaped by regional demographics, immigration histories, age distributions, lifestyles, clothing, and the filtering effect of the routes themselves. Vancouver, Canada’s West Coast, and Texas attract different groups of people. Cross-border airport travelers are not a random sample of the street. Saying that the groups “looked different” does not imply a biological boundary between Canadians and Texans. It reflects how a region’s history, economy, and migration patterns become visible in public space.
That is one of the absorbing parts of travel. Two places may be separated by a single national border, and everyone in a particular airport corridor may even be headed toward the United States, yet the ages, clothing, speech, and pace of movement around them can create a different visual environment. The United States does not have one face, and neither does Canada. The version of “North America” visible along one air route can look like a different social cross-section from the one I see in everyday Texas life.
Related:
- How I “Reasonably” Ended Up in the Wrong NEXUS Line at YVR: the full account of the wayfinding failure during this connection.
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