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There were passenger delays at a number of UK airports on Tuesday due to a nationwide technical outage affecting UK Border Force electronic gates.
Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester and Bristol airports confirmed problems with passengers crossing the border on Tuesday night.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the Home Office announced that the electronic gates were back online shortly after midnight. Meanwhile, Heathrow Airport’s Twitter/X account said: “Following the Border Force national disruption yesterday evening, all systems are now back to normal. Passengers can expect to travel through Heathrow smoothly. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
The Home Office said a “system network” problem caused the electronic gates to go down at 7.44pm on Tuesday. There was no indication of malicious cyber activity and border security was not compromised at any point, the Home Office added.
Footage posted on social media earlier showed long queues of passengers waiting at passport control. Manchester Airport said a dedicated team and customer service staff were on hand to support passengers while UK Border Force dealt with the issue. The center wrote to X: “UK Border Force is experiencing national issues affecting eGates at a number of airports, including Manchester. Our teams are supporting UK Border Force staff to minimize disruption to passengers while they resolve the issue.”
Passengers were already facing disrupted journeys to and from airports due to strike action affecting train services in the UK this week until Saturday.
Gatwick previously said there would be limited or canceled train services to and from Sussex Airport and advised people to plan their journeys in advance and allow extra time.
One affected person wrote to X: “Long queues at Heathrow airport where passengers are being held up on arrivals due to system failure. I’ve been here for 1 hour now and the queue is getting longer and longer. No message has been given to anyone as to what the time frame is for this to be resolved.
Another person posted a video of the chaos and wrote: “No electronic gates working. This is the current queue in Gatwick Airport with many children and no water.”
One Heathrow X user wrote: “I’ve been standing here for over an hour! My taxi is canceled and at this rate I’ll be late for the train. Another wrote: “My daughter waited in line for over 2 hours after a 12 hour flight.”
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