You need to book an Executive Runway View Room, which guarantees a room on the 7th or 8th floor (which are the two highest).
Some reports before have quoted ideal rooms as 8th floor room numbers 5813, 5815, 5817 & 5819 but we were informed that these were one king bed only and as we had Executive Twin rooms booked we needed to be one floor lower. We were given room 5715 on this occasion, which had a great view. Odd rooms numbered 5801 through 5821 (8th floor) and 5701 through 5721 (7th floor) will give you the view you need.
CAN is an epic airport and since our last visit a new terminal (T3) had been opened along with a new Runway (03/21).
Departures to the North - If departing to the North, then from these rooms you can see the departures heading North off runways 01L, 01R, 02L and 02R You can also see departures off the new Runway 03, although you need to be on alert for these and if the cloud base is low they can disappear quickly. No view of arrivals from the south from these rooms but if you go the end of the corridor (high room numbers are closer), you’ll see a nice window looking out towards the runways on the West side of the airport. Here you can catch them landing and rolling out. So a mix of the room and corridor window allows good coverage in this configuration. Even when dark, it was possible to see enough of the departures for them to be logged.
Arrivals from the North - its basically a reverse of the above, great for arrivals but rubbish for departures. While this was not the configuration on this visit a previous visit shows this configuration also works okay. I don't know if the new runway (arriavls on 21) will be visible in this configuration however.
If clear (which it was not on this visit) you can also see the downwinds heading South and the over the tops going into Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Zhuhai.
The 8th floor would be better for the corridor window but I don’t think the 6th floor or lower would be any good for that as the size of the airport infrastructure gets in the way. On our May 2026 visit with is woprth noting that FR24 coverage was patchy, and they drop off or appear only at about 1000ft, so a system is required to ensure you are logging what you actually see and ensuring you see what you actually need.
View from end of corridor window overlooking western runways.
View from 5803.
