Canadian officials were scrambling early Monday morning to fix an outage at border inspection kiosks that caused hours of extensive delays at some of the country’s largest airports.
Passengers arriving at major Canadian airports reported being stranded on planes for hours and stuck in terminals full of people waiting for immigration checks on Sunday as a result of the kiosk outage. Major airports in Montreal, Toronto and Calgary warned of potential delays.
The outage began on Sunday afternoon and affects kiosks where people verify their identity on a screen, said Luke Reimer, a spokesman for the Canada Border Services Agency. The kiosks are used at 10 Canadian airports.
Mr. Reimer said the outage was caused by “an unforeseen technical issue” during routine maintenance, and that the agency was still working to fix it on Monday morning. The agency’s staff was manually processing travelers’ information in the meantime, he added.
The exact scope of the delays was not immediately clear.
The Canadian airline WestJet said on social media that a Toronto airport had paused deplaning because customs were at full capacity after the kiosk outage. Neither the airline nor the two Toronto airports that use the kiosks — Toronto Pearson Airport and Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport — responded immediately to inquiries.
Airports in Montreal and Calgary that warned passengers of potential delays also did not immediately respond to questions early Monday about how the outage was affecting their operations. Neither did Air Canada, the country’s largest airline.
Mike Ives is a reporter for The Times based in Seoul, covering breaking news around the world.
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