Airport chaos as Border Force IT systems COLLAPSE nationwide: ‘Major, major incident’ underway at Heathrow and others with staff having to process passports manually as £372m computer network goes off-line leaving tens of thousands trapped in queues

There is ongoing chaos at airports across the UK tonight after Border Force IT systems collapsed nationwide in a ‘major, major incident’ leaving thousands of passengers trapped in queues.

The main Border Force security database – called ‘Border Crossing’ which was introduced just under three years ago at a cost of £372million – appeared to have suffered a complete shutdown.

E-gates in arrivals halls cannot function without access to the IT system, meaning Border Force officers must check passports manually against back-up databases, it is understood.

‘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.

‘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.’

Pictures shared on social media show enormous lines of passengers in front of the gates at airports like Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, Edinburgh and Manchester as they are waiting their passports to be checked.

The Border Crossing system checks travellers’ names against terrorism records, the Police National Computer and immigration records. 

Passengers were tonight even being prevented from disembarking dozens of aircraft after landing at Heathrow, 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.

The Border Crossing security database has also collapsed, it was confirmed.

‘The secure wi-fi has gone down which means the systems can’t update,’ the source said. ‘They rely on wi-fi for notifications of someone who is known to be travelling to Britain who needs to be stopped, for whatever reason.

‘Without those updates the e-gates can’t keep up to date with real-time security issues.’

Harriet Terry, who is stuck in the queue at Heathrow, told MailOnline that she has been waiting in line for more than an hour and that airport staff has started handing out water.

She said that people were told that the airport was working on a contingency to check passenger’s documents.

Fraser, an IT worker from Colchester, was caught up in the chaos as he returned to Stansted following a trip to Barcelona.

He told MailOnline: ‘There was no hint of any issues when we landed, getting off the plane or arriving to where border force was. But then there was a massive scrum of people and we could see the e-gates were not working.

‘They then announced that due to a computer issue the e-gates were not working so they had to adopt manual desks.

‘The problem is there are hundreds of people here winding back and forward in the lanes waiting to get someone to check their passports.

‘There are obviously still planes landing coming through making their way to the same pinchpoint.

‘People are being typically British and taking it on the chin. There has been a few shouts and comments when they made announcements over the tannoys. It’s not a great welcome back to the UK for Brits or people coming to our country.

‘I have Italian tourists and German people behind me and I wonder what they think as they arrive into the UK.

‘They seem that they are relieving the pressure a bit and moving a lot more than it was. It’s obviously affecting all the other airports.’

Kylee Charles, who was among those stuck in queues at Gatwick, told MailOnline: ‘We were caught up in the chaos. We’ve only just got out of Gatwick after waiting in huge queues of disgruntled travellers. 

‘The Gatwick team took a while to get their back-up plan up and running, which consisted of a series laptops and what appeared to be additional staff; who were all calm and collected though.’

Jenny had been flying from Copenhagen to Edinburgh Airport with RyanAir when the e-gates suddenly closed.

‘We were corralled in passport control and the e-gate passport machines were rejecting everyone telling them to seek assistance,’ Jenny told MailOnline.

‘The machines were then turned off and the person who was managing the queue was apologetic, saying they were understaffed and he didn’t know what was going on. It appeared to be a problem to manually process people.

‘Finally, and this was quite a while later, they decided to manually process people, but all in all it was a shambolic welcome to Scotland. Really embarrassing and a very poor impression of Edinburgh Airport.’

Felix Ostman, 30, who has just arrived at Heathrow Airport on a flight from Oslo, told MailOnline: ‘I’ve just got here and it’s totally chaos, with waiting times over an hour. 

‘The e-gates are now working and UK/EU/US/Australia citizens are asked to use them, however the line is massive. Other nationalities are handled manually by the Border Force.’

In more than an hour, Felix said he only moved about 30 metres – despite announcements that the eGates were up and running again.

‘There are just so many people here,’ he told MailOnline. ‘I’m quite young – I think it is quite a bit worse for others, like people with young children in the queue that will have to be here for hours. I just want to get home, too.’

Due to the massive queues ahead of him, Felix expects to be stuck at Heathrow ‘a few hours more’.

Queues at Heathrow appear to be moving quickly now, as one passenger told MailOnline it ‘only’ took them 40 minutes from disembarking their flight to the hall where the gates are.

Ella Blake arrived at Liverpool Airport tonight and said: ‘The systems went down as our flight’s passengers were going through security.’

She added that ‘staff were as quick as they could’ as they moved arrivals through. 

Gemma O’Kelly, 40, had been travelling from Faro in Portugal to Stansted with her five children when she got caught up in the delays.

The event planner told MailOnline: ‘The airport suddenly said systems were down and that they would check people through manually, however, they had no power at all.

‘We waited 90 minutes but the queues will have people waiting for hours. They said it was a counter-terrorism procedure and that all systems in the UK had gone down, every port and airport in the UK had lost power to their systems. … They didn’t mention an incident just that their computers had lost power.’

The mother-of-five, who was travelling with her partner and children who are between the ages of one and 15, said there were a ‘load of babies crying’ as more and more people joined the manual gates.

‘It was just frustrating as we were told 10 minutes then nothing for 30 minutes,’ Ms O’Kelly said. ‘They kept saying they would be manually checking people through but nothing was happening for around 1 hour and 20. The others will be there much longer.’

MailOnline reporter Rebecca Lawrence is among those stuck in the Gatwick queues. 

She said: ‘I’ve only been in the queue for about ten minutes thus far and honestly, it doesn’t look as bad as Heathrow, so I’m feeling lucky about that! But it is roasting and everyone is irritated.’

‘We have been given no updates or explanation from any staff. They are just shouting at us to move to the right so the mobility cars can get through,’ she added.

Ryanair warned passengers due to arrive at UK airports about the delays in their app.

The notification read: ‘Please be advised that the Electronic Passport gates are temporarily unavailable at all UK Airports. You may experience extended queue times at passport control in airports in the United Kingdom as a result of this outage.’

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

‘It looks like we are in for a very long night,’ Jenny told MailOnline. ‘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.’

The airline also told passengers that they would have to ‘remain onboard the aircraft for a short period of time until the passport control area is less crowded.’ 

A Heathrow Airport spokesperson said in a statement: ‘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.’

Manchester Airport’s statement read: ‘We are aware of an issue with UK Border Force’s systems across the country, affecting a significant number of airports. 

‘Our Resilience Team and customer services colleagues are supporting passengers while UK Border Force and the Home Office fix the issue.’

Edinburgh Airport said in a statement: ‘Border Force is experiencing a nationwide technical outage affecting UK airports. 

‘Although not in a peak arrivals period, some passengers may experience longer than normal waits at the border while UKBF works to fix the issue. Thank you for your patience.’ 

Stansted Airport said in their statement: ‘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.’

A Home Office spokesperson said: ‘We are aware of a technical issue affecting eGates across the country.

‘We are working closely with Border Force and affected airports to resolve the issue as soon as possible and apologise to all passengers for the inconvenience caused.’

The Border Crossing system suffered repeated crashes leading to massive queues at Heathrow when it was introduced in summer 2021.

More recently there were queues of more than an hour at Stansted arrivals halls on April 25 after the e-gates all failed.

Border Crossing was rushed into use – when it was already three years late – because new requirements to check EU travellers in the same way as other international passengers could not be carried out by the database it replaced, the Warnings Index.

The Warnings Index is still available as a back-up but is due to be switched off permanently soon, it is understood.

The Commons’ Public Accounts Committee looked at Border Crossing in March 2021 and warned the Home Office had ‘no proof that systems can cope with passenger volumes that existed prior to Covid’.

The MPs also criticised the ‘staggering’ cost of Government IT schemes and blamed a ‘lack of effective leadership, management and oversight’.