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Hundreds of travellers arriving at Montreal’s Trudeau international airport Sunday found themselves stuck in lineups or on their planes after a nationwide crash of automated Canadian Border Services customs kiosks slowed processing of arrivals to a crawl.

The system breakdown, which also affected the Nexus customs declaration program and some land border checkpoints, hit Trudeau airport late Sunday morning and wasn’t completely resolved until 9 p.m., although the delays — some up to 90 minutes — continued because of the backlog of passengers who needed to be processed at customs.

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While the kiosks provide a mandatory customs declaration form for users, the system crash required the paperwork be done manually.

The situation in Montreal was complicated by an influx of passengers arriving from Europe.

Aircraft had to be emptied “sequentially”to ensure the customs area was not flooded with passengers. Airport spokesperson Anne-Sophie Hamel said planes with passengers who were required to remain on board maintained their air conditioning systems during the delay and water was handed out to passengers.

The systems crash also affected operations at airports in Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary and Toronto.