Heathrow passengers cheer as Border Force reopens after widespread outage at UK airports

Passengers queuing at Heathrow clapped as Border Force reopened after a widespread outage left travellers waiting hours to pass through passport control on Tuesday night (7 May).

Other airports including Gatwick, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle and Manchester were impacted by the e-gate failure, with some complaining of “torturous” conditions.

Border officials were left to manually process travellers instead, with other images and footage shared on social media showing long queues forming at passport control at several airports.

A Home Office spokesperson confirmed the issue was resolved shortly after midnight.