International travellers across the country experienced long delays in clearing customs Sunday evening due to a nation-wide outage of the Canada Border Services Agency's primary inspection kiosks and NEXUS, but the system was slowly restored after several hours.

Robin Smith, spokesperson for the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, said the outage was affecting self-serve kiosks that are normally used by people arriving from international destinations — but noted that “it doesn’t mean a complete standstill.”

“Instead of using the kiosk, passengers are able to use the paper forms,” Smith said in an interview with the Star Sunday afternoon. “It’s more manual but passenger services are still being processed.”

Severall travellers took to social media to post photos of the chaos at the airport, complete with heavy crowds and long lines.

Other major Canadian airports were affected, including in Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary, but a couple of hours later the kiosks were slowly resuming regular service.

“Truly appreciative of everybody’s patience today as we processed arriving passengers,” Vancouver International Airport tweeted, “and thankful to the employees who worked hard to help throughout the issue. Sincere apologies to those who were inconvenienced.”

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