A "nationwide issue" with e-gates at airports has been resolved after causing travel chaos across the country, according to the Home Office, who said the system was back up and running with "no indication of malicious cyber activity".
Social media images and footage showed long queues at the passport scanning gates at several airports overnight. Passengers also reported being held on planes after they landed, while others said the delays caused them to miss trains.
Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports were affected, as well as Manchester, Bristol and Southampton, along with Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen.
One passenger at Luton Airport said it took around 80 minutes from leaving their plane to get through border control, and another said they were held on their plane at Stansted for around an hour and a half after landing.
"We weren't told much other than the e-gates were down but had no idea how long it would take," they told Sky News. "After that not much was said other than we couldn't disembark till the other five planes ahead of us did."
The fault with the e-gates began late yesterday evening and wasn't resolved until 2am, leaving passengers in ever-lengthening queues in arrivals halls and in some cases trapping them on planes.
The delays also left some stranded at airports for the night after the wait meant they missed trains and buses for their onward journey.
At just after 2.10am this morning a Home Office spokesperson said: "E-gates 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."
