By Allison Lampert and Kyaw Soe Oo
MONTREAL/TORONTO (Reuters) – As Canada’s busiest airport in Toronto grapples with unusually long queues, a global airline trade group has urged Canadian authorities to take action to reduce queues of several hours before the next summer season.
Airports from Canada to England are grappling with long queues and delays as a shortage of staff combined with growing demand for travel following a pandemic-induced crisis raises fears of chaos in certain regions before the busy summer season.
In Canada, frustrated passengers have taken to social media in recent weeks to express their anger, posting photos and videos of long lines at customs and security and stacked luggage at Pearson International Airport. of Toronto.
These images fuel new calls for relief as travelers arrive early or avoid the airport ahead of the Victoria Day holiday long weekend on May 23.
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On Friday morning, cars were pushed back about 500 meters (0.5 km) to proceed to the departures area of the airport’s Terminal 1, with hundreds of passengers inside waiting to reach the points security check.
A traveler from New Delhi said passengers were held on the plane for an additional 20 minutes at the gate due to queues at customs. Such delays ground some planes for hours.
“Passengers expect predictability and pay security fees to be processed efficiently,” the International Air Transport Association (IATA) Regional Vice President for the Americas said in a May 17 letter to three Canadian ministers. .
“Unfortunately, over the past weekend, passengers have been held on planes, in some cases for over 185 minutes, due to overcrowded arrivals.”
An IATA spokesperson declined to comment.
INCREASE IN PROCESSING TIME
The Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) expects an almost 50% increase in international passenger numbers at Pearson this summer.
Mark Weber, president of the Customs and Immigration Union, said the number of front-line customs officers at Canada’s three largest airports had declined even before COVID-19, with the expanded use of the self-service checkout technology, creating queues in 2019 as traffic skyrocketed.
“It slowly got worse,” Weber said. “We had a little break during COVID but now that we’re out it’s as bad as ever.”
Canada’s second-largest carrier, WestJet Airlines, said it expects to fly more than 55,000 passengers on Friday, the carrier’s highest single-day total so far this year.
The office of the Minister of Transport Canada said in a statement that there are now about 400 new screening officers in various stages of their training across the country. Transport Canada has created a committee to improve airport operations and reduce wait times.
The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) said it does not share staffing information for specific ports of entry, but is taking steps to provide sufficient resources.
“However, the convergence of flights arriving at the same time, sometimes due to early or late flight arrivals, combined with border health measures may increase the overall processing time,” the agency said by email.
On Friday, Swedish airport operator Swedavia warned on its website of long waiting times due to a lack of staff at security checkpoints, impacting Stockholm’s biggest airport, Arlanda. At the end of April, Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam asked airlines to cancel flights over the weekend to avoid chaos due to overcrowding.
While airports could cope when travel was weak, they can’t hire fast enough, said John Gradek, a lecturer in aviation management at McGill University.
He said the time it takes to process passengers has increased due to health checks, despite these technologies.
“Unfortunately, technology cannot answer all of these questions,” he said. “It still takes eyeballs to do all that work.”
(Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal and Kyaw Soe Oo in Toronto; Additional reporting by Anna Ringstrom in Stockholm; Editing by Denny Thomas and Matthew Lewis)
Copyright 2022 Thomson Reuters.
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