Airport misery as e-gates shut down

AIRPORTS across Britain descended into chaos yesterday as electronic passport gates stopped working, leading to massive queues.

Thousands of passengers were forced to wait for up to four hours in arrival halls while passports were checked manually.

Edinburgh Airport said it was working on contingencies with Border Force, while Glasgow Airport said entry to the UK may take longer than usual at peak times. The Home Office said all e-gates were operating again at around 6pm yesterday.

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

E-gates can be used by British citizens aged over 12 and those from the EU, Australia, Canada and the US.

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