A “nationwide issue” with Border Force e-gates that caused chaos at airports across the country into the early hours of Wednesday has been resolved, the Home Office has announced.
Images and footage posted on social media showed horrendous queues as passengers waited to have their passports checked at airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton.
A spokesperson said in a statement early on Wednesday: “eGates at UK airports came back online shortly after midnight.
“As soon as engineers detected a wider system network issue at 7.44pm last night, a large scale contingency response was activated within six minutes.
“At no point was border security compromised, and there is no indication of malicious cyber activity.”
The Home Office spokesperson also extended apologies to “travellers caught up in disruption” and thanked “partners, including airlines for their co-operation and support” during the outage.
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.
Scenes at Gatwick right now, via my brother trapped in the queue … pic.twitter.com/NnG1tCAdON
— Anna Lamche (@annalamche) May 7, 2024
The 41-year-old told the PA news agency: “(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.”
Sam Morter, 32, who arrived at Heathrow from Sri Lanka, said it was “pandemonium” when he got to passport control in Terminal 3, where all of the e-gates had blank screens.
He told PA: “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.
At Heathrow stuck in a very long queue having got off a plane and doing necessary checks the other side. The computers are down without a contingency plan which is surprising. Passengers are very tired Women and children are being prioritised. Rep using small speaker #heathrow pic.twitter.com/dEdj9wxSuH
— Jeremy Ashdown (@Jez_A_) May 7, 2024
“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.
“We weren’t given any information. There was no information on the Tannoys or from staff.”
The disruption came 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.
