Kiosk outage resolved, says CBSA; travellers held for hours at Toronto Pearson

The system outage that disrupted inspection kiosks and caused significant delays at several Canadian airports on Sunday (Sept. 28) has now been resolved.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) confirmed the news in an update posted to its X account early Monday (Sept. 29). 

“Travellers may continue to experience delays in the short term as we resume normal processing operations. We thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience experienced,” the agency wrote.

The update wraps up a technical issue that caused major disruptions for many international travellers arriving in Canada on Sunday.

Earlier in the day, the CBSA’s inspection kiosks lost connectivity due to an “unforeseen technical issue” during a routine systems maintenance, CBC News reported.

The kiosks, also known as e-gates, are used to confirm travellers’ identity and submit their customs declaration.

Several major Canadian airports — including Montreal’s Trudeau International, Toronto Pearson, and Calgary International —advised on social media that travellers could face longer-than-usual wait times at customs.

Lengthy queues 

PAX was among the many international arrivals affected by yesterday’s delays, which were triggered by passengers being redirected to primary inspection lines for manual processing.

For crowd control purposes, travellers were also held on arriving aircraft until the CBSA authorized disembarkation.

After landing at Toronto Pearson on an Air Canada flight from Athens, we were told that we would need to wait at least 45 minutes before deplaning.

That wait inside the plane stretched to almost two hours, and once we were finally permitted to disembark, we found ourselves in an enormous line—easily a thousand people deep—leading to Canadian customs.

NEXUS members were able to fast-track, but for everyone else, the process dragged on for nearly two hours.

From the time we were held on the aircraft to finally clearing the processing line, exiting Toronto Pearson took us nearly four hours — and for others, the wait was reportedly even longer.

It marks yet another Canada-wide kiosk outage disrupting travel — similar incidents in April and June also caused delays at several major airports.

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