maaxx.ca

Travelers arriving in Britain faced hour-long delays on Saturday after technical glitches closed electronic border gates at airports across the country, forcing everyone to manually check their passports in what is expected to be one of the busiest weekends of the year.

The Home Office, the government agency responsible for immigration and borders, said it was working to resolve “problems in the national border system”, although it gave no details on the cause of the problems.

The airport operator asked for patience and apologized for the delay as frustrated travelers posted pictures on social media of long queues at airports, including in Manchester in the north of England and London Heathrow, the busiest airport in Europe.

Travel is expected to be very busy over the next few days as the three-day weekend coincides with the start of the week-long vacation for most UK schools.

“We are aware of the issues with the national border system affecting arrivals to the UK,” the Home Office said in a statement. “We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and are working closely with port operators and airlines to minimize disruption to travellers.”

The issue, which began on Friday evening, comes as UK airports, airlines and ferry operators try to restore goodwill with the public after a series of disruptions caused travel chaos last summer when overseas travel soared following the coronavirus pandemic.

The ePassport Portal is an automatic self-service barrier designed to expedite the processing of travel documents. Using facial recognition technology, the system verifies the identity of the traveler against data stored on a chip in their passport.

There are now 270 such gates at 15 UK airports and railways, according to the Home Office. They are open to anyone over the age of 12 holding a passport from the United Kingdom, any member state of the European Union, Australia, Canada, Iceland, Japan, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland and the United States.

According to the Home Office, around 86% of people entering the UK each year are eligible to use electronic gates.

Heathrow and other airports have pledged to do what they can to reduce congestion.

“We are aware of national concerns over eGates, which is operated by Border Force,” Heathrow said in a statement.

“This issue affects a number of ports of entry and is not specific to Heathrow. Our team is working closely with Border Force to help resolve issues as quickly as possible and we have additional colleagues to manage queues. waiting and ensure the well-being of passengers.’