CBSA Kiosk Outage Slows Arrivals at Canada Hubs

Published on Nov 13, 2025, 12:34 pm CST

7 min read

Key points

Canada Border Services Agency says a new inspection kiosk outage is affecting some Canadian airports on November 13, 2025
Toronto Pearson confirms it is impacted but reports no major delays so far while passengers are redirected to manual inspection lines
CBSA attributes the disruption to maintenance work and has not reported any security or cyber incident linked to the outage
The failure follows a series of nationwide kiosk outages in late September and mid October that created multi hour waits at major hubs
International travelers with tight connections or late night arrivals into Canada should lengthen buffers and consider routing through less congested periods

Impact

Plan Extra Time For Arrivals: International travelers landing in Canada today should assume slower arrivals processing at affected airports and add at least 60 to 90 minutes where possible
Protect Tight Connections: Avoid minimum legal connections after international arrivals into Canada and favor longer layovers, especially when connecting to U S flights
Adjust Evening And Late Night Flights: Be cautious with late arrivals when staffing is thinner and consider earlier flights or overnighting if a missed connection would strand you
Use Trusted Traveler Options: Eligible travelers should enroll in and use NEXUS or other trusted traveler lanes where available to cut exposure to long primary inspection lines
Monitor Airport And Airline Alerts: Follow airport social feeds, CBSA updates, and airline notifications for real time guidance on wait times and any boarding holds linked to the outage

International travelers arriving in Canada on November 13, 2025 are being warned to expect slower customs processing and longer lines at some of the country's busiest airports after the Canada Border Services Agency, CBSA, confirmed yet another outage affecting its inspection kiosks. The agency says the disruption, which impacts its self service terminals used for primary inspection, is tied to maintenance work rather than a security incident, and that passengers are being redirected to manual inspection lines handled by border officers.

Officials at Toronto Pearson International Airport, one of the main hubs affected, say they are currently not seeing major passenger delays, but they acknowledge that CBSA kiosks are offline and that travelers are being pushed through slower manual processing.CBSA has not published a public list of every airport affected, instead stating that the outage is impacting "some Canadian airports," which suggests that conditions may vary significantly from one gateway to another as local staffing and traffic peaks change through the day.

The new incident adds to a growing pattern of inspection kiosk failures in 2025. In late September, a nationwide technical problem during routine maintenance disabled primary inspection kiosks at multiple major airports, including Toronto Pearson, Montréal-Trudeau International Airport, Calgary International Airport, and Vancouver International Airport, causing extended delays and aircraft being held at gates while customs halls backed up.A further round of outages in early October, and another on October 17, again forced CBSA to fall back on fully manual processing before systems were restored.

Canada Border Services Agency Outage Details

In its latest statement, CBSA links today's kiosk disruption to maintenance work, repeating the explanation it gave in October when similar outages were resolved after several hours.The agency has stressed that safety and security standards remain in place and that border services officers continue to verify identities, collect customs declarations, and conduct additional screening where warranted, albeit with slower throughput while the automated systems are down.

What CBSA has not yet provided is a clear estimate of how long today's maintenance related issue will last or a definitive cutoff time when travelers can safely assume normal operations have resumed. Based on the September and October events, where kiosk outages persisted for parts of an afternoon or evening and then produced residual queues for several hours after restoration, travelers should treat this as a same day risk that can spill into later banked arrivals.

Toronto Pearson has indicated that, at least in the morning hours, the outage has not yet produced the worst case scenes seen in late September, when some passengers faced nearly four hours from touchdown to exit after being held on aircraft and then funneled into very long customs lines.However, that reassurance comes with two major caveats, traffic at Pearson and other hubs typically peaks later in the day, and a single flight bank arriving during an ongoing outage can quickly overwhelm manual lines, just as happened during the earlier nationwide failure.

Latest Developments

So far, CBSA's own messaging has emphasized that the problem is limited to inspection kiosks and that the outage is a by product of maintenance work, not a cyberattack or broader security incident.Global News reporting on the October outages notes that CBSA President Erin O'Gorman has already called these repeated equipment failures "not acceptable," and that Public Safety officials have asked for a report on the challenges facing the aging technology.Today's disruption will only increase pressure on CBSA and its federal partners to modernize the border inspection stack, rather than continually falling back on manual workarounds in live operations.

Travelers and local media have learned from recent events to treat kiosk outages seriously, even when early official statements are calm. During the late September failure, passengers at Toronto Pearson reported sitting on aircraft for up to two hours after landing while customs halls cleared enough space for new arrivals, with total airport exit times running to three or four hours in extreme cases.That history means that even if the November 13 outage is resolved more quickly, traveler behavior should assume the potential for similar gridlock during the busiest windows.

Analysis

At a practical level, the immediate impact of a CBSA kiosk outage is straightforward, every arriving international traveler who would normally scan a passport and answer customs questions at a self service machine must instead join a manual line where border officers process each arrival in person. Even with all available officers on duty, that shift from partially automated to fully manual processing can cut throughput sharply, especially at airports that are designed around the higher volumes that kiosks and eGates can handle.

Background, CBSA's primary inspection kiosks are a central part of Canada's modern border control system. They capture passport data, verify biometrics, and collect customs declarations before a traveler has any interaction with an officer, who then reviews the kiosk receipt and asks follow up questions where needed. When the kiosks are working, they help move low risk travelers quickly while allowing officers to focus attention on exceptions. When they fail, every traveler effectively becomes an exception, and customs halls revert to a pre automation era workflow that the current terminals were not built to handle at peak volumes.

Repeated outages in June, late September, and October have already exposed how brittle this reliance on aging CBSA technology has become.The October 17 incident prompted O'Gorman to publicly label the failures "not acceptable," and to acknowledge that CBSA is working on contingency plans and long term fixes, but those efforts will take time and money to translate into resilient systems at every major airport.

For travelers connecting onward from Canada, the main vulnerability lies in tight layovers after international arrivals. A connection that looks reasonable on paper, for example 90 minutes from an overseas arrival into a domestic or United States bound flight at Toronto Pearson, can disintegrate if a kiosk outage adds an extra 45 to 90 minutes to the customs process, particularly in the evening when staffing may be thinner.That risk has already translated into missed connections and overnight stays during previous outages, and there is no reason to expect different dynamics this time if the disruption overlaps with a heavy arrival bank.

Late night operations deserve special attention. Many flights from Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean land into Canadian hubs in the evening or close to midnight. If a kiosk outage is still active or has only recently been resolved when those flights arrive, passengers can face backed up queues with fewer counters open, and options for rebooking can be limited until the next day.That is why, for the duration of this event, risk averse travelers should favor earlier arrivals and be willing to accept a longer layover rather than gamble on a tight evening connection.

Final thoughts

Today's CBSA kiosk outage may not yet have produced the dramatic scenes of the late September failure, and Toronto Pearson's early signals that delays are manageable are an encouraging sign.Even so, the pattern of repeated maintenance related failures across 2025 means travelers should no longer treat kiosk downtime as a rare fluke. On November 13, 2025, anyone flying into Canada, particularly through Toronto Pearson and other large international hubs, should plan for longer customs processing, pad connection times, and closely monitor airport and CBSA updates as the day unfolds.

As long as CBSA's aging inspection technology continues to suffer disruptions, inspection kiosk reliability itself has become a meaningful operational risk for international itineraries into Canada. Treating that risk seriously when booking and connecting is now part of smart trip planning, just like accounting for weather or air traffic control constraints.