Watch: Crowds build at Heathrow as passport e-gates go down
By Michael Race
Business reporter, BBC News
A “technical issue” affecting passport control e-gates has been causing long queues at airports across the country.
Airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle and Manchester all confirmed a Border Force problem was causing delays late on Tuesday.
The airports said they were supporting Border Force to “minimise disruption”.
Pictures and videos are circulating on social media showing long queues.
The Home Office, which oversees Border Force, said it was working with the agency and affected airports to “resolve the issue as soon as possible and apologise to all passengers for the inconvenience caused.”
It said it had no further details to add about the nature of the technical fault or how it occurred.
E-gates are automated gates that use facial recognition to check a person’s identity and allow them to enter the country without talking to a Border Force officer.
There are more than 270 of them in place at 15 air and rail ports in the UK, according to the government’s website, which also says they are supposed to “enable quicker travel into the UK”.
Image source, Hristo Totochev
The queue at Gatwick Airport’s south terminal arrivals hall
Manchester Airport said its customer-services colleagues were supporting passengers by handing out water to those experiencing delays. It added any excess charges for people who are late to leave car parks as a result of the problems would also be waived.
Steven Brownrigg, who arrived on a flight into Manchester Airport, told the BBC there were “several flights in quick succession, which meant a lot of passengers” queueing for passport control.
“I was in the queue for around 90 minutes. Priority was given to families with small children and vulnerable passengers, and staff were handing out bottled water to everyone,” he said.
“Generally, most were frustrated but accepted the situation, but a few people were unhappy and questioned staff.”
‘Chaotic scenes’
A passenger at Heathrow described border officials rushing to manually process passport holders.
“All the e-gates were totally blank and there was just a lot of chaotic scenes,” said Sam Morter, 32, who was returning after a holiday in Sri Lanka.
He said he made it through the airport after about 90 minutes.
Tuesday is not the first time the UK’s automated e-gates have stopped working. Airports were also impacted by an IT issue in May 2023.
And in August last year, around 2,000 flights at airports across the UK were cancelled when the National Air Traffic Services system for automatically processing flight plans failed, leaving passengers stranded.
Heathrow, the UK’s largest airport, apologised to passengers for the delays to journeys and added it was supporting Border Force “with their contingency plans”.
“Border Force is currently experiencing a nationwide issue which is impacting passengers being processed through the Border,” an airport spokesperson said.
A Gatwick spokesperson added that their staff were working with UK Border Force – who operate passport control including the e-gates – “to provide assistance to passengers where necessary”.
Belfast International Airport said it was working with Border Force “to deploy contingency plans to process internationally-arriving flights while the situation is resolved”.
It does not have e-gates, but a spokesperson said the Border Force systems were being impacted.
