An outage that briefly affected the Canada Border Services Agency’s primary inspection kiosks at some Canadian airports has been resolved, the agency said Thursday.
A CBSA spokesperson said the system outage began around 10:20 a.m. Eastern, forcing the agency to revert to manual processing of international arrivals which led to delays.
The agency reported the situation had been resolved over three hours later.
“Travellers may continue to experience delays in the short term as we resume normal processing operations,” a spokesperson told Global News in an email.
“We thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience experienced.”
The spokesperson later added the outage was related to another outage that affected the kiosk system earlier this week, “which was caused by an unforeseen technical problem during routine systems maintenance.”
“It was not the result of any cyberattack,” the CBSA clarified.
Get daily National news
Toronto Pearson International Airport had warned on X earlier Thursday that the outage was impacting Terminal 1 and Terminal 3 and that passengers may experience “longer than normal wait times.”
Montreal Trudeau International Airport, Ottawa International Airport and Calgary International Airport had also shared CBSA’s X post on the outage but did not provide further details on any impacts.
Travellers were being re-directed for manual processing during the outage, which can take longer, a CBSA spokesperson said earlier Thursday.
“Safety and security standards are upheld at all times, with border services officers working to verify travellers’ identities, receive their declarations, and conduct any additional screening warranted by each traveller’s individual circumstances,” the agency said.
“The CBSA works closely with airport management to expedite traveller processing, minimize delays, and complete verifications as required.”
Ten Canadian airports currently use the CBSA’s electronic primary inspection kiosks, which were first unveiled in 2017 in order to streamline arrivals.
The first outage of the inspection kiosks this week started on Sunday and was resolved early Monday morning.
The Niagara Falls Bridge Commission, which operates the Lewiston-Queenston International Bridge crossing between Ontario and New York state, said Sunday’s outage of “CBSA systems” also affected cross-border commercial traffic and led to ongoing delays.
The authority said Canada-bound commercial carriers should avoid the bridge “until further notice.”
“While CBSA has implemented a processing systems fix, the resulting delays continue, and all adjacent queuing areas within the Western New York region are at, or beyond, capacity,” it said in a statement on its website.
Global News has asked CBSA for clarity on what other systems have been impacted.
Comments