The disorder at Toronto Pearson International Airport was visible from the sky.

The pilot on Ted Laking’s domestic flight into the city last week had some unwelcome news: 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.

The trip home on Monday wasn’t much better. Mr. Laking, a city councilor in Whitehorse, Yukon, was again greeted by signs of trouble before entering the airport. This time, it was the tail end of a line of travelers spilling through Pearson’s sliding doors.

“It feels almost like a postapocalyptic movie, just everybody for themselves,” Mr. Laking said. Security lines with unclear endpoints would snake into a new course at the request of airport workers. There was no room to sit and too little staff to handle the irate travelers. All this was happening against the dissonant soundtrack of flight-delay announcements.

“People were yelling at each other; the public was getting at each other’s necks,” Mr. Laking said. “You get to the gate, and it was just pure chaos.”

These extreme backlogs have resulted in several interventions from the federal government and thousands of flight cancellations in Canada, while airports around the world are grappling with the same sort of problems as travel volumes rebound.

On Tuesday, the chief executive of London’s Heathrow Airport said staff shortages had constrained the airport’s capacity, leading it to limit passengers for the summer. Dublin Airport floundered under the pressure of surging travel demand across Europe in the spring, and thousands of flights at airports in the United States were canceled before the Fourth of July.

Sure, even before the pandemic, traveling through Canada’s major airports could be frustrating, and nostalgia for the Before Times may be coloring some of the current criticism on social media by frustrated passengers at Pearson airport