Travellers stranded at UK airports after IT system collapse shuts down passport e-Gates

There is Border Force chaos at airports in the United Kingdom this morning following a ‘nationwide IT system collapse that shut down passport e-Gates.

The problem had reared its head yesterday when the passport IT system collapsed ‘nationwide’ forcing border staff to process thousands of passengers manually.

This led to hours of delays and many passengers missing airport connections and National Express services home.

The fault with the e-gates was not resolved until 2 am, stranding passengers in ever-lengthening queues in arrivals halls and, in some cases, trapping them on planes.

The major incident’ was caused by a Wi-Fi outage which, in turn, stopped a Border Force’s security database called ‘Border Crossing’ from being able to update. The system was introduced three years ago, costing taxpayers £372million.

Just after 2.10am this morning Home Office said it had finally fixed the system and had no evidence its outage had been caused by a cyber attack.

However for many the ordeal was only just beginning with queues for coaches and taxis leaving the airport also lasting hours, forcing many passengers to lie down on the floor.

After clearing the border, passengers at Stanstead were forced to wait for hours more outside for the 4:30am National Express train back to London.

The fallout from the disruption continues with many passengers expressing their disbelief at the lack of an adequate backup plan in place which resulted in some queuing for longer at the border than they spent on their flight from Lisbon.

At Stanstead Airport, the situation was particularly desperate, with mother Joanna Griffin telling The Mirror that ‘loads of children were waiting without water or food.’

Reacting to their predicament in Heathrow arrivals, one passenger told GMB: ‘It’s absolutely tragic, an absolute mockery out of all of us.’

Another revealed the stomach-churning moment they realised they were in a long wait, saying: ”As soon as we get to the airport we’re greeted by queues and this one guy saying there’s going be at least a two and a half hour wait.’

Another said: ”We arrived about an hour ago. Supposedly there’s a backup system but I imagine if the first fails and the second, maybe the third is not so good as well.’

One Heathrow passenger claimed that the situation was further jeopardised by a bathroom fault.

The told the Mirror: ‘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!’

One passenger flying into Stanstead from Murcia in Spain told MailOnline that after arriving they spent one hour on the tarmac before two hours in a queue.

She said: ‘Some people tried to push in or jump the queues, but the police were great in stopping them.’

Disastrous scenes saw disgruntled travellers crowded into small corridors as they waited to have their ID records checked, while flustered members of staff frantically handed out water.

If Border Crossing is shut down, e-gates cannot function, so Border Force staff had to check passports manually against back-up databases, checking travellers’ names against terrorism records, the Police National Computer and immigration records.

‘Clearly this is a major, major incident because you don’t expect this system to go down for any length of time across the board,’ a source said before the problem was fixed.

‘The involvement of major airports in different parts of the country, from Gatwick to Manchester, suggests this is a nationwide system crash.

‘If both Border Crossing and the back-up system are affected it would mean issuing laptops to officers on the PCP [primary control point], which will slow things down even further.’

The unprecedented situation engulfed airports across the country, with photos shared on social media showing enormous lines of passengers in front of the gates at airports like Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, Edinburgh and Manchester.

While some of the e-gates appeared to be coming back online overnight – for example at Heathrow – other passengers were bracing for queues lasting hours.

Footage shared on social media shows the moment the e-gates reopened at Heathrow, with passengers smiling and clapping as the first people enter the automated passport control cubicles.

The system outage also impacted flights due to land in the UK last night.

Jenny Coxall was due to fly to Stansted on a Ryanair flight from the Spanish city of Girona, but she said her flight was ‘being held [there] because of the Border Force gates outage’.

‘It looks like we are in for a very long night,’ Jenny told MailOnline last night around 11pm. ‘We’ve been sat on the plane for 80 minutes. We are hopefully taking off soon but I’m not looking forward to the other end.’

She said she had already been notified about the Border Force delays in the Ryanair app, with the airline telling passengers they would likely have to ‘remain onboard the aircraft for a short period of time until the passport control area is less crowded’ once they land in the UK.

Passengers were also prevented from disembarking dozens of aircraft after landing at Heathrow last night, it is understood.

They were unable to leave the planes because of the crisis unfolding in the terminals, where thousands of passengers were queueing in corridors and in the arrivals halls.

The crash appeared to have been caused by a failure in the official government wi-fi network which provides secure real-time updates to the security systems, insiders said.