Automated border control systems or e-gates as they are commonly known, have come into question after a mass outage at major airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Luton meant airport staff had to process passengers manually.
On Tuesday evening, e-gates experienced an outage and a continuous flow of passengers arriving resulted in a quick backlog needing processing. In some cases, people waited for several hours in queues, while others tried to find hotels in which to stay. The problem was resolved at midnight on Wednesday.
A spokesperson for the Home Office ruled out a cyber attack as they said in a statement: “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.”
Approximately 270 e-gates are in operation across the UK and are said to be a more efficient way of processing travellers through border control, according to the Home Office. The installation of e-gates have been steadily expanding, and as of 2024 new e-gates are being installed that are capable of allowing travellers to pass border control by using only advanced facial recognition.
They rely on biometrics data in electronic passports and facial recognition to check a person’s identity and allow them to enter the country without speaking with a border control office, who would conduct a manual check.
The explanation given for the outage was a “system network issue”. Similar scenes were seen in May of last year during the bank holiday, when disruption with e-gates resulted in passengers facing long delays. This was attributed to an error in a software upgrade.
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