‘No indication of malicious exercise’ as e-gates again working at UK airports after journey chaos

A “nationwide issue” with e-gates at airports has been resolved after inflicting journey chaos throughout the nation, the Home Office has mentioned.

It mentioned the system was again up and operating and there was “no indication of malicious cyber activity”.

Social media photographs and pictures confirmed lengthy queues on the passport scanning gates at a number of airports in a single day.

Passengers additionally reported being held on planes after they landed, whereas others mentioned the delays brought on them to overlook trains.

Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports have been affected, in addition to Manchester, Bristol and Southampton, together with Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen.

One passenger at Stansted Airport informed Sky News they’d missed a number of coaches to central London due to the problems, and solely cleared the airport after almost three hours in line.

“Not much info given. No water handed out. Babies crying,” they mentioned.

Another at Luton Airport mentioned it took round 80 minutes from leaving their flight from Amsterdam to get by border management.

One traveller mentioned they have been held on their aircraft at Stansted for round an hour and a half after touchdown.

“We weren’t told much other than the e-gates were down but had no idea how long it would take,” they informed Sky News.

“After that not much was said other than we couldn’t disembark till the other five planes ahead of us did.”

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‘No indication of malicious cyber exercise’

A Home Office spokesperson mentioned: “E-gates at UK airports came back online shortly after midnight.

“As quickly as engineers detected a wider system community concern at 7.44pm final night time, a large-scale contingency response was activated inside six minutes.

“At no point was border security compromised, and there is no indication of malicious cyber activity.”

E-gate system crashed final 12 months

The disruption got here after Border Force staff staged a four-day strike at Heathrow Airport in a dispute over working circumstances final week.

The union mentioned staff have been protesting towards plans to introduce new rosters, which they declare will see round 250 of them compelled out of their jobs at passport management.

The UK’s e-gates system additionally crashed in May final 12 months, inflicting lengthy queues and a number of other hours of delays for passengers.

At the time journey professional Paul Charles informed Sky News underinvestment within the UK’s transport infrastructure had left these methods “hanging by a thread”.

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