Airport delays were down in the first few days following Ottawa’s suspension of randomized COVID-19 testing at Canadian customs. But while the measure marks a “big step” toward clearing clogged terminals, more still needs to be done to end airport gridlock, says the head of the Canadian Airports Council.

Monette Pasher said wait times and tarmac delays for arriving flights at large airports improved immediately after the move went into effect Saturday. However, she added that there were still gate holds, albeit for shorter periods of time.

“We’re very encouraged by the news… (but) in our business we never want to see people waiting on the tarmac.”

At the same time, she predicted that “People can expect longer wait times in summer, but we shouldn’t see anything like we’ve seen the past month. I think we’re getting over that hurdle,” Pasher said.

On Friday, Ottawa announced it would pause molecular tests of inbound international passengers selected at random, and that mandatory rapid tests for unvaccinated arrivals will happen off-site starting July 1.

The airports council and other industry groups are now calling for an end to vaccine mandates for passengers and aviation employees, saying that hundreds more workers could be back on the job amid a labour crunch.

The government continues to bar most unvaccinated foreigners from entry and require unvaccinated Canadians to quarantine for 14 days when they return.

After laying off security personnel during the pandemic, Ottawa said the country’s airport security agency has hired 865 screening officers since April, with more to come as Canada’s four largest airports gird for a 50% rise in traveller numbers within weeks.

As of June 1, those hubs were processing an average of 56,000 inbound passengers from abroad each day – more than half of them at Toronto’s Pearson airport, where scenes of endless queues and traveller frustration played out in social media posts and news reports through much of the spring. The figure will hit 80,000 within weeks, the airports council forecasts.

Greater Toronto Airports Authority spokeswoman Tori Gass says that for now “it appears the removal of the random mandatory tests has made a difference,” along with shored-up staffing levels.

In May some 490,810 passengers – about half of all inbound travellers from abroad – were held up after arriving on international flights at Pearson airport, facing delays as they sat on the tarmac or went through staggered off-loading to ease pressure on overflowing customs areas, according to figures provided by the authority.

In total, some 2,700 flights arriving from outside the country were delayed at Pearson last month, versus four planes – and a few hundred passengers – in May 2019.

The problem is not unique to Canada. International hubs such as London’s two main airports and Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport regularly see hours-long bottlenecks due to staff shortages and the global travel rebound that feeds off two years of pent-up demand.

The testing pause comes at the same time the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the government would drop COVID-19 tests as a requirement for entry – a measure Canada has already phased out.