Primary inspection kiosks are back online after a service disruption affected several airports Thursday morning, according to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).
The interruption was caused by an unexpected technical issue during maintenance work. Services were disrupted at around 8 a.m. ET, and were back online by noon ET, according to the agency.
The CBSA told CTVNews.ca the outage affected international airports in Vancouver (YVR), Calgary (YYC), Edmonton (YEG), Winnipeg (YWG), Toronto (YYZ and YTZ), Ottawa (YOW), Montreal (YUL), Quebec City (YQB) and Halifax (YHZ).
The outage was not the result of any cyberattack, spokesperson Rebecca Purdy wrote in an email.
As a result, travellers were redirected to manual processing lines.
Past outages
It was the latest in a string of outages affecting the network since late September. On Sept. 28, some inspection kiosks went down early in the evening due to “unforeseen technical problems.” Days later, on Oct. 2, the CBSA reported another outage. Maintenance work also halted service on Oct. 17.
Following that third outage, CBSA president Erin O’Gorman addressed concerns around the network’s repeated interruptions, acknowledging that the agency uses “legacy systems.”
She also said – during the same event in Niagara Falls, Ont. – that such outages are unacceptable, and that the CBSA was working with partners to ensure service can be restored quickly when halted.
With files from CTV’s Daniel J. Rowe.
