British travellers were left fuming over chaos overnight across UK airports, as kids were left waiting without food or water for hours.
A fault - reportedly involving passport e-gates operated by the UK Border Force - affected a number of airports, including Heathrow, Stansted, Gatwick, Edinburgh and Manchester - following a 'nationwide' IT collapse. An unspecified technical issue was blamed for the incident which sparked carnage with passengers forced to queue for hours.
Frustrated passengers posted pictures and videos as they were forced to stand in snaking queues trying to enter the UK last night. A number of passengers contacted The Mirror and took to social media to share the pandemonium.
Joanna Griffin, who was stuck in a queue at Stansted Airport, told the Mirror: "[There are] loads of children waiting and no one has water or food. It’s a complete disgrace - they never have enough gates for a backup if the computer system fails."
Barrister Chris, 36, told the Mirror he was stuck on a British Airways plane on the tarmac at Heathrow T5. He said: "We arrived slightly early from Lisbon but have not been allowed to disembark. Sadly I have work in the morning - the crew doesn’t know when they’ll be able to let us off."
Chris, from North West London, added: "We haven't been given any refreshments yet. The toilet taps actually ran out of water, so people have had to use bottled water to wash their hands!"
British Airways sent a message to its passengers waiting to get through Passport Control. The message read: "We are sorry to inform you that due to an IT issue at Border Force UK, you might experience some delays in disembarking your plane and clearing immigration at London Heathrow. This is outside of our control, our teams are working with border force to ensure you can clear immigration as soon as possible."
Passenger Dr Douglas Meakin branded London Heathrow Terminal 2's border control "a catastrophe". He told the Mirror: "I estimate it'll take around three hours to get through. No updates, no information, no nothing. It's worse than any third world country I've been to. Unbelievable."
Meanwhile, other travellers took to social media to voice their outrage. One at Heathrow described it as a scene of chaos where "thousands" were forced to stand waiting for border control. He wrote on social media: "Computer outage at Heathrow border control. A few thousand people in line and not a single person at Heathrow is able to figure out a solution."
Another person caught up at Stansted chimed in: "Border control e-gates not working at Stansted due to computer problem. Fail over either not working or non existent. Another warm welcome to the UK at a broken airport." At Heathrow, it was claimed by one passenger that "every single E-Gate" is not working at multiple terminals.
Molly Rosedale, who is stuck at Heathrow, wrote on Twitter: "All systems down and thousands in queues across all terminals. No plan in sight either. Water bottles are being handed out, never a good sign. Photo courtesy of my husband in Terminal 5."
One person caught up at Stansted said on social media: "Border control e-gates not working at Stansted due to computer problem. Fail over either not working or non existent. Another warm welcome to the UK at a broken airport." At Heathrow, it was claimed by one passenger that "every single E-Gate" is not working at multiple terminals.
Molly Rosedale, who is stuck at Heathrow, wrote on Twitter: "All systems down and thousands in queues across all terminals. No plan in sight either. Water bottles are being handed out, never a good sign. Photo courtesy of my husband in Terminal 5."
A cameraman from London has described the delays at Heathrow Airport because of a "nationwide" issue with Border Force e-gates as "pandemonium". Sam Morter, 32, landed at Heathrow's Terminal 3 at around 7.30pm from Sri Lanka and said he saw airport staff "scrambling" to sort the situation after the technical issue caused significant disruption at airports across the country.
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He said: "We headed to passport control where it already started to become pandemonium in there. All of the e-gates had just gone down and all of them had blank screens. 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."
Mr Morter said passengers were frustrated by the situation and felt for those who had recently landed from a long-haul flight.
"A lot of disgruntled, angry and frustrated passengers and people coming off of long-haul flights very tired, so that didn't help. Not great scenes," he said.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are aware of a technical issue affecting eGates across the country. 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.”
This morning the Home Office confirmed that a "nationwide issue" with Border Force e-gates that caused significant disruption at airports across the country has been resolved.
A Home Office spokesperson said in a statement early on Wednesday: "eGates at UK airports came back online shortly after midnight. As soon as engineers detected a wider system network issue at 7.44pm last night, a large scale contingency response was activated within six minutes. At no point was border security compromised, and there is no indication of malicious cyber activity."
The Home Office spokesperson also extended apologies to "travellers caught up in disruption" and thanked "partners, including airlines for their co-operation and support" during the outage.