Chaos at UK airports as glitch closes e-gates

Passengers arriving at some of the UK’s busiest airports on Tuesday faced long queues and chaotic scenes after a malfunction in the UK Border Force’s electronic gate system.
Airports including London Heathrow, the country’s busiest, experienced a systems cut that the airport described as a “nationwide issue”.
Immigration officers at several airports across Britain were dealing with technical problems.
Heathrow Airport said it was aware of problems for Border Force nationwide and was trying to help before the UK Home Office later confirmed the problem had been fixed and the system was back online shortly after midnight (3am in the UAE).
Gatwick and Stansted, two of London’s other airports, Manchester Airport and Edinburgh also confirmed problems.
“As soon as engineers detected a wider system network issue at 7.44pm (GMT), a large-scale contingency response was activated within six minutes,” the UK Home Office said. “At no point was border security compromised and there is no indication of malicious cyber activity.”
Pictures posted on social media showed long queues at passport control gates.
“We are working closely with Border Force and affected airports to resolve the issue as soon as possible,” Heathrow posted on X earlier in the evening.
“Our teams are supporting Border Force with their contingency plans to help resolve the problem as quickly as possible and we apologise for any impact to your journey.”
One traveller described border officials rushing to manually process passport holders.
Seems to be a UK nationwide airport system crash. No e gates working. This is the current queue in Gatwick airport with lots of children and no water #welcometotheuk pic.twitter.com/ckT21gJYXx
“All the e-gates were totally blank and there was just a lot of chaotic scenes,” said Sam Morter, 32, who was returning to Heathrow from a holiday in Sri Lanka.
Mr Morter said he made it out of the airport after about 90 minutes.
A London Gatwick representative said: “Some passengers may experience delays at immigration due to a nationwide issue with UK Border Force e-gates.”
Passports were checked manually at some airports.
“We are aware of an issue with UK Border Force’s systems across the country, affecting a significant number of airports,” a Manchester Airport representative said.
Britain’s automated border gates system crashed in May last year, causing long queues and several hours of delays for passengers.
The country’s air traffic system was also affected in August last year when a technical problem disrupted the National Air Traffic Service for several hours.