diff --git a/plugin/trino-sqlserver/pom.xml b/plugin/trino-sqlserver/pom.xml
index 5099a5508526..634889101eca 100644
--- a/plugin/trino-sqlserver/pom.xml
+++ b/plugin/trino-sqlserver/pom.xml
@@ -15,6 +15,14 @@
 
     <properties>
         <air.main.basedir>${project.parent.basedir}</air.main.basedir>
+
+        <!--
+          Project's default for air.test.parallel is 'methods'. By design, 'classes' makes TestNG run tests from one class in a single thread.
+          As a side effect, it prevents TestNG from initializing multiple test instances upfront, which happens with 'methods'.
+          A potential downside can be long tail single-threaded execution of a single long test class.
+          TODO (https://github.com/trinodb/trino/issues/11294) remove when we upgrade to surefire with https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SUREFIRE-1967
+          -->
+        <air.test.parallel>classes</air.test.parallel>
     </properties>
 
     <dependencies>