Travel chaos at Heathrow and major UK airports over Border Force issue
Queues at Heathrow Airport – Dheeraj Chintala
Thousands of passengers were stranded at Britain’s busiest airports on Tuesday night as the e-gate system failed causing chaos.
Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester airports were hit by the nationwide failure of the e-gates, leaving passengers facing queues of two hours as they returned from extended Bank holiday breaks.
It is the second time the e-gates have failed in two weeks, raising questions over the reliability of the system which is designed to speed up passengers through passport checks.
There was no evidence to link the border chaos to a cyber attack, but it came just a day after the armed forces payroll system was hacked by a suspected “state actor”.
The Home Office said it was investigating the e-gate failure.
“We are aware of a technical issue affecting eGates across the country,” a spokesman said.
“We are working closely with Border Force and affected airports to resolve the issue as soon as possible and apologise to all passengers for the inconvenience caused.”
Long queues at Heathrow – Reuters
The gates are understood to have failed at 8pm on Tuesday night just as thousands of passengers landed on early evening planes.
The main Border Force security database – called “Border Crossing” which was introduced just under three years ago at a cost of £372 million – appeared to have suffered a complete shutdown.
Thousands of arrivals at Heathrow, the UK’s busiest airport, were delayed, with passengers waiting in queues for up to two hours. There were also long delays at Stansted, Manchester and Edinburgh airports, and delays of 90 minutes were reported at Gatwick.
Passenger Nathan Lane posted on X: “The entire Egate immigration system at Heathrow Airport is down at all terminals. Now all the systems at the desks are too. Brits and foreigners alike. Nobody is getting through. This is management yelling updates at everyone.”
Richard Gaisford posted on the social media site: “E-gates down at LHR T3, and seemingly across Heathrow Airport. Border Force suggests to passengers it might be a nationwide outage.”
Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, who was among those queuing at Heathrow, said: “You see how high-capacity the system normally is by how rapidly things turn to chaos when it breaks; plane after plane of people pouring in and backing up in the corridor.”
Chaos as e-gates are down at multiple airports – Twitter
There were indications that planes may have been delayed and stacked up in the air to prevent increasing the pressure on queues of passengers waiting to have their documents manually processed by Border Force officers.
Dominic Baliszewski, co-founder of a PR company, said: “Apparently Heathrow isn’t letting planes land and doesn’t have a real plan. E-gates down and they’re processing everyone manually through one gate. This is only a small portion of the queue. Almost no staff on hand.”
At Bournemouth airport, Border Force staff were reported to have resorted to laptops to process passports. Richard Heading, a passenger, reported on X: “All systems are down and they are using laptops to check passports. There are moderate delays.”
A spokesman for Heathrow airport said: “Border Force is currently experiencing a nationwide issue which is impacting passengers being processed through the border.
“Our teams are supporting [them] 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.”
There are more than 270 e-gates in place at 15 airports and train stations in the UK that were all understood to have failed. The cause of the issue was unclear. The Home Office apologised last month following the failure on April 25, which it blamed on a “technical issue”.
E-gates usually process the vast majority of passengers, including children aged ten and over, arriving in the UK. They were originally restricted to British and EU arrivals.
However, their use has been extended over the years to include arrivals from Australia, Canada, Iceland, Japan, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland and the US.
E-gates have repeatedly failed
The e-gates have failed on a number of occasions in the past three years. The whole system collapsed at the start of the late May bank holiday weekend in 2023 because of a failed system upgrade, resulting in four-hour queues at airports. In 2021 technical issues caused the gates to fail three times in two months.
An aviation source said: “It is underinvestment again – the system falls over at peak periods. The last major outage like this was the same weekend last year – the Coronation weekend.”
The apparent collapse of the system will raise questions over Border Force’s ambition to create an “intelligent border” with new e-gates capable of allowing arrivals into the country using only advanced facial recognition.
Phil Douglas, the director-general of Border Force, said that the plans have been designed to bring Britain’s border up to a gold standard that has been developed overseas.
Trials of the new technology are expected to begin at airports later this year before the launch of a full procurement process for new gates.
It comes amid growing concerns in the UK Government about the prospect for chaos at the border over French plans to scan fingerprints at the EU border.
Lord Cameron, James Cleverly and Mark Harper have all recently raised concerns about the potential impact of the new Entry/Exit System (EES), with French ministers.
Rishi Sunak was due to bring up the practical impact of the changes, which start in October, with Emmanuel Macron on a call last month but other issues dominated instead.
From Oct 6, people travelling into the EU will have to scan their fingerprints and be photographed at border checks instead of simply presenting their passport.
12:20 AM BST
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11:35 PM BST
Heathrow 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.”
11:34 PM BST
No relief as travellers face long queues
Long queues continue to build, including at Heathrow, with one traveller describing 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 to London’s Heathrow from a holiday in Sri Lanka.
He told PA: “There was a lot of Border Force officials running and scrambling around. Four or five went to man the posts and start processing the UK passports manually.
“But at the same time, hundreds of passengers started to flood into passport control, so it all of a sudden became chaotic and they couldn’t cope with the number of the people coming in.
“We weren’t given any information. There was no information on the Tannoys or from staff.”
He made it through the airport after around 90 minutes.
Videos posted on X showed long queues of passengers at passport desks.
10:49 PM BST
E-gates appear to be reopening
E-gates are beginning to reopen at some airports, but long queues remain.
Paul Curievici, from Haslemere in Surrey, landed at Gatwick Airport at around 7.30pm on a flight from Lyon and waited in line for almost an hour at passport control.
The 41-year-old said: “(I was) a little bit resigned at what initially looked like another British infrastructure failing, and (I had) quite a lot of sympathy for the poor buggers furrowing their brows and trying not to look embarrassed.”
Mr Curievici said the e-gates at Gatwick had since reopened but that fast-track passengers continued to be prioritised, which he found “pretty galling”.
He continued: “There was an awkward moment – half of us had been funnelled into the ‘all passports’ queue.
“When the system came back online they reopened almost all the UK/EU gates without opening any for us – I actually raised it with a member of staff and they finally opened one.”
10:08 PM BST
Outage comes a day after MoD hack
The outage comes just a day after news emerged of a hack on the Ministry of Defence, which has been blamed by sources on China. It is unclear if the e-gate crash was caused by a hack.
10:00 PM BST
‘The system falls over at peak periods’
An aviation source told the Telegraph: “It is underinvestment again – the system falls over at peak periods. The last major outage like this was the same weekend last year, the Coronation weekend.”
09:54 PM BST
Pictured: Long queues at Gatwick
Queues at Gatwick
09:51 PM BST
Issues come after recent strikes
The disruption comes after Border Force workers staged a four-day strike at Heathrow in a dispute over working conditions last week.
The union said the workers were protesting against plans to introduce new rosters they claim will see around 250 of them forced out of their jobs at passport control.
09:45 PM BST
‘Lots of children and no water’
09:41 PM BST
‘Some passengers may experience longer than normal waits’
Edinburgh Airport statement: “Border Force is experiencing a nationwide technical outage affecting UK airports.
“Although not in a peak arrivals period, some passengers may experience longer than normal waits at the border while UKBF works to fix the issue. Thank you for your patience.”
09:40 PM BST
Stansted Airport statement
“We are aware of an issue with UK Border Force’s systems across the country, affecting all UK airports.
“Our operational and customer service colleagues are supporting passengers while UK Border Force and the Home Office fix the issue.”
09:39 PM BST
‘No communication on timeframe’
09:36 PM BST
Pictured: Manchester Airport
Queues at Manchester Airport
09:31 PM BST
E-gates closed at Edinburgh
Malfunctioning e-gates at Edinburgh Airport
09:25 PM BST
Passengers reporting chaos on social media
09:20 PM BST
Manchester Airport statement
“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.”
09:20 PM BST
Ryanair statement
“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.”
09:12 PM BST
Gatwick statement
“Some passengers may experience delays at immigration due to a nationwide issue with UK Border Force e-gates.
“Our staff are working with UK Border Force – who operate passport control including the e-gates – to provide assistance to passengers where necessary.”
09:09 PM BST
Long queues
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