By Matias de DovitiisIt’s the holidays and I was trying to help a friend book a flight out of Toronto going through ticket prices when I remembered: we have one of the most expensive airports in the world.It is very expensive to fly out of Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. It is more expensive than big European cities like London or Paris. It is more expensive than New York or Beijing. It is more expensive than Dubai, which is currently building the biggest airport in the world. In fact, it is more expensive than anywhere in the world except for a few cities in Japan and it is still the most expensive airport in the Americas. This has been true ever since they built the new airport terminal at Pearson. At the time, it was a very big project, but there are much bigger and newer airports in other places, and they are not as expensive.The airport fees out of Pearson (the ones you see and the ones the airlines pass on to you as a passenger) are so steep that hundreds of thousands of people drive to Buffalo and other nearby cities to fly from there every year.Big fees might be a good thing if passengers were getting a good return on their investment. After all, the airport is publicly owned and the fees go to maintain and operate it. The problem is that the airport is operated privately through an agency called the Greater Toronto Airport Authority (GTAA) that operates like a private monopoly. While the agency does not make a profit for investors (it is not a for profit entity), it is filled with management types that make big salaries, but are doing a poor job of flying us in and out quickly.The airport famously failed last January during a cold winter spell. The airport was shut down, because the deicing operations were backed up and the computer systems failed. Hundreds of flights were delayed for days. The airport was in chaos, yet, the top management made big bucks and nobody got fired.CEO, Howard Eng was on vacation during the crisis and had to apologize publicly a number of times. According to the sunshine list, Howard Eng made $712,138 a year in 2012.CFO, Brian Gabel was responsible for the contracting out of the IT services that crashed during the January storm. He has since left the GTAA and probably received a big severance package on his way out. 2012 SALARIES OF GTAA OFFICIALS:Howard Eng, CEO$712,138*Brian Gabel, CFO$513,300Douglas Love, VP$906,240**Pamela Griffith-Jones, VP$407,950Patrick Neville, VP$392,945*Including incentives**Including a severance package of $514,000