Chaos at Heathrow as all gates go down in Border Force 'IT glitch'

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There is chaos at airports across the UK after all gates went down – with a Border Force ‘IT glitch’.

Pictures on social media show enormous queues in front of the gates at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, Edinburgh and Manchester as thousands are waiting for their passports to be checked.

Heathrow staff reportedly told those in the queues that it was a nationwide IT problem affecting the e gates.

One passenger waiting at Heathrow told MailOnline that she has been waiting in the queue for more than an hour and that airport staff has started handing out water.

She said that people were told that the airport was working on a contingency to check passenger’s documents.

Pictures on social media show enormous queues in front of the gates at Heathrow (pictured above), Gatwick and Manchester as thousands are waiting for their passports to be checked

Long queues at Gatwick Airport as thousands of passengers are waiting for their passports to be checked

The e gates at Edinburgh airport are closed after an alleged IT glitch caused a nationwide outage

Kylee Charles, who was among those stuck in queues at Gatwick, told MailOnline: ‘We were caught up in the chaos. We’ve only just got out of Gatwick after waiting in huge queues of disgruntled travellers’ (pictured: queues at Gatwick)

Fraser, an IT worker from Colchester, was caught up in the chaos as he returned to Stansted following a trip to Barcelona.

He told MailOnline: ‘There was no hint of any issues when we landed, getting off the plane or arriving to where border force was. But then there was a massive scrum of people and we could see the e-gates were not working.

‘They then announced that due to a computer issue the e-gates were not working so they had to adopt manual desks.

‘The problem is there are hundreds of people here winding back and forward in the lanes waiting to get someone to check their passports.

‘There are obviously still planes landing coming through making their way to the same pinchpoint.

‘People are being typically British and taking it on the chin. There has been a few shouts and comments shwen thy made announcements over the tanoyns. It’s not a great welcome back to the UK for Brits or people coming to our country.

‘I have Italian tourists and German people behind me and I wonder what they think as they arrive into the UK.

‘They seem that they are relieving the pressure a bit and moving a lot more than it was. It’s obviously affecting all the other airports.’

Kylee Charles, who was among those stuck in queues at Gatwick, told MailOnline: ‘We were caught up in the chaos. We’ve only just got out of Gatwick after waiting in huge queues of disgruntled travellers.

‘The Gatwick team took a while to get their back-up plan up and running, which consisted of a series laptops and what appeared to be additional staff; who were all calm and collected though.’

Jenny had been flying from Copenhagen to Edinburgh Airport with RyanAir when the e-gates suddenly closed.

‘We were corralled in passport control and the e-gate passport machines were rejecting everyone telling them to seek assistance,’ Jenny told MailOnline.

‘The machines were then turned off and the person who was managing the queue was apologetic, saying they were understaffed and he didn’t know what was going on. It appeared to be a problem to manually process people.

Chaos at Heathrow Airport as thousands of passengers are waiting in massive queues after an alleged IT glitch took down the gates

People at Edinburgh Airport are checking for updates on their phones as they are waiting to be processed

‘Finally, and this was quite a while later, they decided to manually process people, but all in all it was a shambolic welcome to Scotland. Really embarrassing and a very poor impression of Edinburgh Airport.’

It is understood that the airports were now checking passports manually.

Ryanair warned passengers due to arrive at UK airports in their app.

The notification read: ‘Please be advised that the Electronic Passport gates are temporarily unavailable at all UK Airports.

‘You may experience extended queue times at passport control in airports in the United Kingdom as a result of this outage.’

A Heathrow Airport spokesperson said in a statement: ‘Border Force is currently experiencing a nationwide issue which is impacting passengers being processed through the Border.

‘Our teams are supporting Border Force with their contingency plans to help resolve the problem as quickly as possible and are on hand to provide passenger welfare. We apologise for any impact this is having to passenger journeys.’

Manchester Airport’s statement read: ‘We are aware of an issue with UK Border Force’s systems across the country, affecting a significant number of airports.

‘Our Resilience Team and customer services colleagues are supporting passengers while UK Border Force and the Home Office fix the issue.’

This is a breaking news story. More to follow.

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