Passengers returning to Bristol airport have faced long delays on Saturday (May 27) because of problems with electronic passport gates. E-gates at airports across the UK, including Bristol, started experiencing problems on Friday night.
The outage means that passengers are having to wait for manual passport checks. Passengers arriving at Bristol reported it taking an hour from disembarking to clear border control.
One traveller said: “It took us an hour from disembarking to clear border control. Announcement kept apologising for the short delay which led to increasing groans and did not help passengers who remained calm.”
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The outage comes at a time when many are travelling due to the bank holiday and half term holidays. A spokesman for Bristol Airport said extra resources had been drafted in and queues were subsiding.
The spokesperson said: “Like all UK airports, Bristol Airport is currently being affected by the unplanned 24-hour national e-gate outage. Queues at passport control were busy for a period of time early this morning, with the maximum queue time for passengers arriving into Bristol Airport being 60 minutes.
“Queues have eased throughout the morning and Border Force and the Bristol Airport team have brought in extra resources to help minimise and manage the delays. We do apologise to all customers who have been impacted.”
The Home Office spokesperson it was working to resolve the issue as soon as possible and was liaising with airlines and port operators to minimise disruption for travellers.
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