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eGate airport disruption: What happened in Manchester, Heathrow and elsewhere – and will it happen again?

A “system network issue” which caused huge queues at airports including Manchester last night is “unlikely” to recur, Manchester Evening News understand. Passengers have seen waits as long as 80 minutes in Manchester, with some claiming they were on planes for around 30 minutes after landing due to the size of the “crazy” queues.

Other airports in the country were also affected, following a nationwide connectivity issue that hit the Border Force last night (May 7). It is understood the exact cause of the problem has yet to be determined and the Home Office will carry out a “lessons learned exercise” to prevent the problem from happening again.




The problem affected eGates – automated self-service barriers that use data stored in a chip in biometric passports – as well as some police systems, passport systems and immigration systems. A statement issued by the Home Office on Wednesday morning confirmed the gates were working again, adding that “at no time was border security compromised and there is no indication of malicious cyber activity”.

READ MORE: Border Force is back online after an outage caused ‘crazy’ queues at Manchester Airport

The MEN understands the issue was with UK Border Force systems and was completely separate from Manchester Airport. The rest of the airport outside border control is believed to have been unaffected during the disruption.

However, it is also understood that an issue affecting ePassports only occurred about a month ago. This is believed to be slightly different to the issue travelers experienced last night, which was mainly with eGates.

Issues at the UK border caused delays at airports including Manchester, Gatwixk and Heathrow(Image: PA)

The airport has been told the problem has been fixed and is not expected to happen again, it is understood. UK Border Force was able to process entries into the country, but only by using physical agents during the disruption.

The Border Force’s IT security systems are led by the Home Office’s IT organisation, Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT). The Home Office has contingency arrangements in place in the event of a system failure and the Border Force was last night working with airports in line with those plans, it is understood.

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