Britain's five-hour flightmare: Passport e-gates back online after mass outage left thousands stranded

7 May 2024, 21:49 | Updated: 8 May 2024, 07:33

Were you caught up in the chaos? Contact LBC at online@lbc.co.uk

Passport e-gates are back online after five hours of travel hell broke out at airports on Tuesday evening, following the collapse of UK Border Force IT systems.

UK Border Force reported an ‘IT glitch’ resulting in thousands of people being stuck in queues at passport gates across the country.

Heathrow Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, Edinburgh, Bristol and Manchester were among the airports affected by the outage.

Footage shared online of the delays at Heathrow showed a huge queue ahead of the passport e-gates.

E-gates are automated gates that use facial recognition to check a person’s identity without talking to a Border Force officer to “enable quicker travel into the UK”.

A Heathrow spokesperson said: "Border Force is currently experiencing a nationwide issue which is impacting passengers being processed through the border.

"Our teams are supporting Border Force with their contingency plans to help resolve the problem as quickly as possible and are on hand to provide passenger welfare. We apologise for any impact this is having to passenger journeys."

Stansted and Gatwick said the issue at both airports was related to the e-gates passport control.

Manchester Airport also confirmed that the UK Border System was down due to the nationwide outage. The e-gate systems went down at around 7:30pm, but around 11pm staff later said it had mostly subsided.

The main Border Force security database, called ‘Border Crossing’, suffered a complete shutdown just under three years after the £372 million system was introduced, according to the MailOnline.

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Huge queues have built up at airports across the UK amid a Border Force 'IT glitch'

Video credit: X/@rxsiebo

Speaking from Heathrow, Simon Calder, Travel Editor for The Independent, told LBC: “People are telling me they’re getting waits of typically 90 minutes to get through.”

He explained without the e-gates, which is an automated operation, “it’s very bad news”.

Mr Calder added it would be even worse if it continued into Wednesday, when the airports typically see an influx of early morning flight passengers.

“It’s possibly going to be perceived as yet another symbol that things that just don’t work here anymore," he added.

He said of evening flights: “All you’re wanting to do is get through border control and get home and if you’re there until half past one in the morning, it’s going to be absolutely miserable”.

Mr Calder said the outage would also affect the Eurostar operations at Paris, which also relies on e-gates.

Simon Calder on the e-gates troubles at UK airports

Simon Griffiths, who arrived at Heathrow Terminal five from Bologna, told LBC: “I reckon the wait was probably about two, two-and-a-half, three hours. People are moving but there are a lot of people that are pretty hot. No food, just water. Yeah, people are getting pretty frustrated."

A London Gatwick spokesperson said: "Some passengers may experience delays at immigration due to a nationwide issue with UK Border Force e-gates.

"Our staff are working with UK Border Force - who operate passport control including the e-gates - to provide assistance to passengers where necessary."

A cameraman from London described the delays at Heathrow Airport as "pandemonium".

Sam Morter, 32, landed at Heathrow's Terminal 3 at around 7.30pm from Sri Lanka on Tuesday and said he saw airport staff "scrambling" to sort the situation after the technical issue caused significant disruption at airports across the country.

He said: "There was a lot of Border Force officials running and scrambling around. Four or five went to man the posts and start processing the UK passports manually. But at the same time, hundreds of passengers started to flood into passport control, so it all of a sudden became chaotic and they couldn't cope with the number of the people coming in."

Stansted Airport said in a statement: "We are aware of an issue with UK Border Force's systems across the country, affecting all UK airports.

"Our operational and customer service colleagues are supporting passengers while UK Border Force and the Home Office fix the issue."

Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton airports later confirmed they have also been affected by the outage.

AGS Airports, which operates all three sites, said the flights schedule means they are currently not affected by queues - but Glasgow Airport is expecting international arrivals later this evening.

Meanwhile, Jenny, who was flying from Copenhagen to Edinburgh Airport, said: “We were corralled in passport control and the e-gate passport machines were rejecting everyone telling them to seek assistance.

“The machines were then turned off and the person who was managing the queue was apologetic, saying they were understaffed and he didn't know what was going on. It appeared to be a problem to manually process people.

“Finally, and this was quite a while later, they decided to manually process people, but all in all it was a shambolic welcome to Scotland. Really embarrassing and a very poor impression of Edinburgh Airport.”

Paul Curievici, from Haslemere in Surrey, landed at Gatwick Airport at around 7.30pm on a flight from Lyon and waited in line for almost an hour at passport control.

The 41-year-old said: "(I was) a little bit resigned at what initially looked like another British infrastructure failing, and (I had) quite a lot of sympathy for the poor buggers furrowing their brows and trying not to look embarrassed."

Mr Curievici said the e-gates at Gatwick had since reopened but that fast-track passengers continued to be prioritised, which he found "pretty galling".'

He continued: "There was an awkward moment - half of us had been funnelled into the 'all passports' queue.

"When the system came back online they reopened almost all the UK/EU gates without opening any for us - I actually raised it with a member of staff and they finally opened one."

In an update on Wednesday morning, a Home Office spokesperson said: “eGates at UK airports came back online shortly after midnight.

"As soon as engineers detected a wider system network issue at 19:44pm last night, a large scale contingency response was activated within 6 minutes.

"At no point was border security compromised and there is no indication of malicious cyber activity.

"We apologise to travellers caught up in disruption and thank our partners, including airlines for their co-operation and support."

It is the second time in just two weeks the e-gates have been hit by technical issues affecting passport eGates.

Passengers faced long queues on April 25 after airports across the country reported a similar outage.

A spokesperson for the Home Office said at the time: “We are aware of a technical issue affecting eGates across the country. We are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible and apologise to all passengers for the inconvenience caused.”

The disruption comes after Border Force workers staged a four-day strike at Heathrow in a dispute over working conditions last week.

The union said the workers were protesting against plans to introduce new rosters they claim will see around 250 of them forced out of their jobs at passport control.