Travellers facing 'chaotic' delays as Pearson airport navigates long lines, staffing issues
CBC
Travellers at Toronto's Pearson International Airport are being asked to pack plenty of patience on Monday as longer than expected lineups and Canada-wide staffing shortages cause delays.
"This is ridiculous — this is really not well organized," said Adam Brazier, who is travelling home with his family to P.E.I.
"A lot of people are going into the wrong lines right now because there's nobody to tell us which lines to go into."
Matthew Green, the NDP MPP for Hamilton Centre, reached Pearson airport about 90 minutes before his 8:10 a.m. domestic flight to Ottawa. He says he arrived to find about 500 people lined up in the airport outside of the gate, in what he described as a "disorganized, chaotic conga line."
What became immediately apparent, Green says, is that the airport was "completely understaffed, unprepared, and unable to accommodate the bottleneck that was happening there."
Green missed his initial flight, waiting two hours before boarding a different one.
The airport sent out a message on Twitter Monday morning, advising travellers to leave themselves lots of extra time and to check their flight status before leaving for the terminal.
"We'd like to remind passengers that employees in the terminals are doing their best to get them on their way," the airport said in a statement.
Several Canadian airports have had frustrated travellers in long lines due to a shortage of security screeners.
Vancouver has seen particularly long waits, with passengers saying they have also missed domestic flights due to security screening delays.
In an email to the CBC News, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) said it's making every effort to address the issue — but it can't find enough workers.
CATSA, which is the federal crown corporation that's responsible for all passenger security screening, says once it does manage to hire enough staff, it will also take time to train them.
Pearson also says health checks to cover the increased number of travellers have doubled processing times.
Green calls it "wholly unacceptable" that the airport couldn't have predicted delays as post-pandemic travel ramps up.
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