Toronto airport’s wait times to worsen amid staff shortages

Bloomberg

Canadians travelling through Toronto Pearson International Airport are facing lengthy wait times and the situation is likely to worsen in coming weeks.
The airport is being hit with a double whammy of staffing shortages and longer processing times due to public health screening measures, according to Greater Toronto Airports Authority spokesperson Tori Gass. The Covid-19 measures can double or even quadruple the required processing time, she said.
“We are forced to sort of hold passengers on their airplanes because of capacity issues,” Gass said. “There’s not enough space inside the terminal.”
The bottlenecks are expected to worsen during the busy summer season with the number of international passengers expected to rise to around 45,000 a day from 30,000 currently, Gass said.
The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) has put in place additional measures to increase staffing in the coming weeks, according to the office of Canada’s Transport Minister Omar Alghabra.
“As the air sector continues to recover, staffing remains an issue that the industry is working as quickly as possible to resolve,” his office said in an emailed statement.
CATSA, whose CEO Mike Saunders apologised earlier this month for increasing wait times at major airports, referred to a statement when contacted by Bloomberg News.
The company’s third-party security contractors, which are responsible for providing airport screening officers, have worked to boost staffing levels but are finding it hard to
hire workers, CATSA said at
the time.
Canada’s travel sector is recovering after a two-year
upheaval wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, with the country re-opening its borders and easing restrictions. While the government has dropped a pre-entry Covid test for vaccinated travelers, it still enforces random testing upon arrival, which only adds to the long queues.
Understaffed Airports in the US, UK and Australia are seeing the worst gridlock in years as they struggle to cope with the fresh rush or travellers.