Bristol airport 'chaos': e-Gate failure leaves passengers stranded in hour-long queues

Passengers at Bristol Airport's were confronted with 'chaos' last night after a nationwide eGate outage caused severe delays at Heathrow, Luton and Stansted.

Images posted on social media show crowds of people stranded at Bristol Airport, with reports that there were only three members of staff processing travellers following the eGate failure.

One traveller tweeted that there was 'chaos' at Bristol Airport
@Real_SamJoseph

The Home Office admitted yesterday that there had been an eGate outage at a 'number of ports', with staff at Luton Airport reportedly telling frustrated passengers that there had been a 'national outage'.

The eGates services are run by a central UK-wide security database costing £372 million which was brought into use in June this year - more than three years overdue.

This is the third time in three months that a failure of the e-Gates have been reported.

There are more than 270 of the systems across 15 airports and rail ports in the UK.

The gates also stopped working at airports and ports on September 24 and October 6 2021 and were closed for weeks, even after foreign travel was permitted again.