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Chaos at airports after electronic gates fail

Evening Standard

|

May 08, 2024

Fury as passengers trapped in queues for hours are forced to sleep on the floor

- Ross Lydall, Nicholas Cecil and Martin Bentham

Chaos at airports after electronic gates fail

THE Home Office was today facing questions after tens of thousands of passengers were caught up in late-night chaos at British airports when e-gates stopped working.

Labour MP Dan Jarvis, the shadow security minister, submitted an urgent question seeking to force a government minister to come to the Commons to explain what caused the nationwide outage of the Border Force electronic passport gates.

Passengers vented their fury on social media after being trapped for hours in queues from around 8pm last night. Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton were among the airports affected.

Many passengers had to sleep on the floor after not being able to pass through the gates until after the last train had left. Others battled for a seat on a coach or shared a minicab with strangers to get home.

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