Canadian Airports Take on Influx of Travelers During FAA Outage
While Friday’s nationwide ground stop has been lifted, airports in Canada are dealing with the influx of traffic and passengers from canceled and diverted flights.
Toronto Pearson International Airport provided status updates on X throughout the day regarding its domestic and international operations. At 9:20 p.m., the airport said the ground stop was over — the FAA had lifted it around 8:30 p.m. — but flights to and from the US would still be disrupted.
Still, that doesn’t mean the chaos is over — with planes and crews displaced, it could be well into the weekend before things get back on track.
Toronto Pearson said it brought in additional staff to manage the crowds and help travelers.
“We are increasing staffing across the airport to assist affected passengers,” the airport said. “Our support teams are being deployed throughout the terminals, with additional resources available in the U.S. departures area. We are also working closely with airlines and have implemented a parking plan for aircraft.”
Other airports, including Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver, also implemented traffic management systems, NAV CANADA, a privately run nonprofit corporation that owns and operates Canada’s civil air traffic system, said Friday evening on X.
It said during the outage that its systems were “operating normally” and that it issued the programs to “safely manage traffic volumes.”
Mark Stephens, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot, told Business Insider that Canadian airports would take on US-bound international flights that need to divert.
He added that the planes on the ground at the airports will return to their gates, meaning traffic management will be imperative to handle the potential increase in volume.
As of 10 p.m. Eastern time, nearly 7,000 flights have been canceled within, to, or out of the US, according to FlightAware.com. Another 7,000 have been delayed.
Cirium, an aviation analytics company, said nearly 1,000 flights were diverted on Friday, with airports like Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Cleveland taking on additional aircraft.
