THOUSANDS of passengers are facing chaos across all UK airports after are experiencing due to a nationwide IT glitch.
Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester are among the airports experiencing huge queues and long wait times due to a Border Control “technical issue”.
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Tens of thousands of travellers landing home after holidays have spent the evening stuck in crowded queues at passport control.
Pictures show fuming British citizens waiting for their passports to be checked manually because of the IT glitch.
The Home Office said it was aware of a “technical issue” affecting gates and was working closely with Border Force to resolve it “as soon as possible”.
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.”
Sam Morter, 32, who arrived at Heathrow from Sri Lanka, said it was “pandemonium” when he got to passport control in Terminal 3, where all of the e-gates had blank screens.
He said: “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.”
Ryanair customers due to land in the UK were warned via 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.”
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 spokesman told The Sun: “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.”
A spokesperson for Manchester Airport said: “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.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “eGates at UK airports came back online shortly after midnight.
“As soon as engineers detected a wider system network issue at 19:44pm last night, a large scale contingency response was activated within 6 minutes.
“At no point was border security compromised and there is no indication of malicious cyber activity.
“We apologise to travellers caught up in disruption and thank our partners, including airlines for their co-operation and support.”
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.
