The UK Home Office has 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: “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.”
The spokesperson added: “At no point was border security compromised, and there is no indication of malicious cyber activity.”
The statement also extended apologies to “travellers caught up in disruption” and thanked “partners, including airlines for their co-operation and support” during the outage.
Images and footage shared on social media appeared to show long queues forming at the gates, which scan passports, in London’s Heathrow Airport.
A spokesperson for the airport said: “Border Force is currently experiencing a nationwide issue which is impacting passengers being processed through the Border.
“Our teams are supporting Border Force with their contingency plans to help resolve the problem as quickly as possible and are on hand to provide passenger welfare.
“We apologise for any impact this is having to passenger journeys.”
A spokesperson for Stansted Airport said: “We are aware of an issue with UK Border Force’s systems across the country, affecting all UK airports.
“Our operational and customer service colleagues are supporting passengers while UK Border Force and the Home Office fix the issue.”
The disruption comes after Border Force workers staged a four-day strike at Heathrow in a dispute over working conditions last week.
The union said the workers were protesting against plans to introduce new rosters they claim will see around 250 of them forced out of their jobs at passport control.
