The Canadian air travel situation earned itself a feature article in The New York Times this weekend. As you might guess, it wasn’t a good news piece.

Here’s how it started: “The disorder at Toronto Pearson International Airport was visible from the sky.” Uh-oh, that doesn’t sound great.

The story continued: “The tarmac was too crowded for the aircraft to descend. It would be another hour of circling around before the runway was clear enough for landing.”

Citing the experience of Whitehorse, Yukon city councillor Ted Laking, the New York Times story described his trip home a few days later as “not much better.” This time the crowding was in the terminal, with the security line “spilling through Pearson’s sliding doors.”

Laking described it this way: “It feels almost like a post-apocalyptic movie, just everybody for themselves. Security lines with unclear endpoints would snake into a new course at the request of airport workers. People were yelling at each other; the public was getting at each other’s necks. You get to the gate, and it was just pure chaos.”

The Times acknowledged that “airports around the world are grappling with the same sort of problems as travel volumes rebound.”

That’s true, but things seem particularly bad here. In June, for the second month in a row, Air Canada and WestJet posted the worst on-time performance of North America’s 10 largest airlines.

Air Canada flights arrived on schedule just 37.99% of the time in June, while 47.04% of WestJet flights were on time. The delays made the airlines the ninth and tenth worst-performing carriers on the continent.

As summer demand continues to surge, things don’t seem to be getting better. On July 12, more than 70% of Air Canada flights were delayed, more than any other airline in the world. WestJet hit a similar percentage on July 14, according to tracking site Flight Aware.

A combination of factors is driving the chaos, but a shortage of staff across a wide range of airline and airport positions is the biggest factor.

In April 2020, the largest Canadian airlines saw a record 97% drop in passengers compared with the previous year, according to a Statistics Canada report. The previous record was 26%, after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

With the industry nearly shut down at the onset of the pandemic, flight attendants and pilots were laid-off and so were employees of outsourced companies responsible for security and baggage claim.

David Harris, executive chairman of travel advisor consortium Ensemble Travel Group, told Yahoo Canada that “it’s not a case of simply being able to flip a switch and having everything get back” to normal.

“The good news is that travel is back, the bad news is that travel is back after a two-year hiatus from the pandemic,” Harris said.

“What happened over the past two years in our industry is that the workforce was decimated and that's on multiple verticals, whether it was airlines, flight attendants, pilots, maintenance mechanics, airport ground handlers, hoteliers, travel agencies and advisors, all of these areas have been dramatically impacted, and all of that is playing a significant role in the labour shortage.”

The labour crisis is bound to ease over time, but after more than two years of intense pain for travel advisors, Harris worries that consumer confidence in the travel industry will take a major hit.

“That's what I have grave concerns about because we know that in the absence of consumer confidence, a full recovery, or even a decent recovery for us, is definitely imperilled. We need the industry to be able to communicate this better to consumers, communicate what the challenges are, what's being done, and what the timeline is to recovery.”

Harris says he feels that if the situation does not improve quickly it could cause travellers to have “some kind of knee-jerk reaction, like, ‘well, I'm never going to travel again,’ or ‘I'll wait a year or two before we even think about traveling once again.’”

In some good news, CATSA – which is responsible for airport security screening in Canada – reported that during the week of July 7-13, its staff processed about 80% of passengers within 15 minutes, despite higher passenger numbers.

Calgary International Airport and Toronto Pearson International Airport maintained gains made since the beginning of May, with 85% and just under 80% of passengers screened within 15 minutes, respectively. At Vancouver International Airport and Montreal Trudeau International Airport, about 75% and 68% of passengers were screened within 15 minutes.