Passengers were stuck for hours in sweaty, stifling corridors at Britain's busiest airports as passport systems crashed
Polly Thompson
- Long queues formed at major UK airports after a nationwide outage affected electronic passport gates.
- Many were stuck for more than an hour in hot corridors with no water and little information.
- "It's absolute chaos. They're telling us nothing," one passenger told BI's reporter, who was also caught up in the delays.
Border control at many of the UK's biggest airports was disrupted for multiple hours on Tuesday evening after electronic passport gates suffered a nationwide outage.
Thousands of passengers landed at London Gatwick — Europe's eighth busiest airport — late on Tuesday to face massive delays in entering the country.
This reporter was among those to face the huge lines, spending almost two hours queuing to get through passport control — longer than the flight from France I'd taken.
Similar issues were reported at major airports nationwide, including hubs like Europe's busiest airport, London Heathrow, as well as Manchester, Birmingham, and Edinburgh.
"Only the manual desks are being manned and it's going to take a while to get through," one airport staff member shouted to passengers who had just disembarked a flight only to see crowds filling the hallways.
"All airports in the UK are impacted," she added.
Polly Thompson
The crowd was left waiting in the increasingly hot corridor, slowly edging forwards with no idea how long the delay would last. Many made calls to relatives, telling them not to wait up.
There was mostly no access to toilets or water, and buggies carrying disabled and elderly passengers could not pass through the crowds.
"It's absolute chaos. They're telling us nothing," complained one passenger, who had just flown back from holiday in Benidorm, Spain, with his family.
A group of upbeat young men cracked jokes, drawing a few laughs from tired passengers.
"Oh… and it's another long corridor boys," they joked as the crowd slowly moved around yet another corner in the airport. "Every ten feet we have to cheer."
"Let's light a cigarette and set off the fire alarm. That would get us all out of here quickly," said another.
As the temperature in the packed hallways began to rise, others became more frustrated.
"We have no idea what is happening. These are crazy queues in Gatwick airport," Gedi, a Lithuanian national returning to his home in the UK, told BI. "I'm feeling very sweaty and very hot."
After around 50 minutes, BI's reporter entered the main border control hall, where more staff were on hand, trying their best to calm the crowds and handing out bottles of water.
"It's a national outage of the e-gates," one airport official confirmed to BI. "The Home Office will know more, but it's across all the airports nationwide. It's unplanned."
A massive wave of arrivals had recently arrived at Gatwick's north terminal, making the delays particularly bad, she said.
The official, who started her shift at 6 p.m., told BI at around half past midnight that the issue had been ongoing for about six hours.
However, the British Home Office told BI that "a wider system network issue" had been detected by engineers at 7.44 p.m.
"A large-scale contingency response was activated within 6 minutes," the Home Office said. "eGates at UK airports came back online shortly after midnight."
They have ruled out an intentional cyber attack.
"At no point was border security compromised and there is no indication of malicious cyber activity," a spokesperson told BI.
Polly Thompson
By around 1 a.m., travelers were passing through the e-gates at Gatwick's north terminal, and the queues had begun to dissipate.
But once through border control, the chaos continued as passengers searched through baggage that had arrived long before its owners.
Onward travel at Gatwick was also affected by train strikes on Tuesday, leading to more queues stretching outside the airport for taxis.
"This is some people's first experience of England," noted one man in the queue, shaking his head.
"We apologise to travellers caught up in disruption and thank our partners, including airlines for their co-operation and support," the Home Office told BI.
E-gates in the UK were also affected by an IT issue in May 2023, creating similar scenes at airports.
In August 2023, the UK's National Air Traffic control service was disrupted by a "technical issue" in the flight-planning system.