Passport to nowhere

E-gate glitch fuels chaos at airports during bank holiday trips

AIRPORTS across Britain descended into chaos yesterday as electronic passport gates stopped working, leading to huge queues of frustrated passengers.

Thousands were forced to wait for up to four hours in crowded arrival halls while passports were checked manually at airports including Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester.

The Home Office announced that all e-gates were finally operating again at around 6pm yesterday.

It came after separate computer problems at British Airways led to more than 175 flights being cancelled on Thursday and Friday, while others were delayed. More than 20,000 customers were affected.

There was also heavy congestion on roads across Britain as people tried to get away for the bank holiday weekend.

Luke Bosdet, of the AA, said: ‘We predicted Saturday would be hellish

‘We’ve returned to the mother of all queues’

on the roads and that has come true. There is congestion across the country in all the usual spots due to the sheer weight of traffic, but the ports are quite clear for a change.

‘There is still some slow-moving traffic at Dover, but nothing like the hours-long queues we’ve seen there previously.

‘By far the biggest issue travelwise is the airports, where we’ve seen some major delays.’

Mr Bosdet added: ‘It’s always a gamble for bank holiday getaways when it comes to whether to go by plane or ferry. It doesn’t happen very often, but on this occasion the boats have won.’

There were delays at border control in Dover yesterday morning due to a French computer outage, but the resulting queues were cleared quite quickly.

People vented their frustration about the airport drama on social media. Yesterday morning, holidaymaker Lina Tayara tweeted from Heathrow: ‘Returning from Dubai overnight to this mother of queues. Apparently national outage in border control machines so manual passport checks.’

At 7.30am, she added: ‘My plane landed at 6am, there is still a sea of people in front of me.’

The bank holiday weekend was expected to be one of the busiest in the UK since the Covid pandemic, with more than 11,500 flights due to depart. Good Morning Britain reporter Richard Gaisford was caught in the chaos, tweeting: ‘Four hours late due to flight cancellation and delays. Now e-gates have failed, queues building. Well done British Airways, UK Border Force and Heathrow Airport – you are a credit to the nation.’

E-gates can be used by British citizens aged over 12 and those from the EU, as well as people from countries such as Australia, Canada, the US, Japan and New Zealand.

Lucy Morton, from the Immigration Services Union, said up to 80 per cent of incoming passengers now go through e-gates, and the only solution to the outage was to put ‘all the passengers through physically manned officer desks’.