A nationwide technical issue has sparked chaos at Sydney International Airport, with customers queuing for a kilometer as technicians scramble to fix the problem.
The Australian Border Force (ABF) confirmed the outage on Saturday morning.
“We are aware of a technical issue affecting the smart gates at Sydney Airport,” a spokesperson said, apologizing for the delays.
“We are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and have deployed additional officers to help facilitate travel.”
A nationwide technical issue with electronic immigration gates has caused significant delays at Sydney International Airport. Image: Supplied
In a post sent to X on Saturday morning, Sydney Airport provided this update: ‘Issues with e-gate machines have been resolved. The queue for customs clearance at the T1 international terminal has now been normalized. Thank you for your patience.’
But the problem caused long delays for travelers, with crowds gathering between the immigration gate and the terminal.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), traveler Rajiv Singal captured the extent of the delays earlier that morning.
A long queue formed from the immigration gate to the terminal as the ABF attempted to resolve the issue. Image: X
“Flying internationally from Sydney? There’s a kilometer long queue for immigration control!” She posted with the video attached.
“And I assume it would be the same across Australia as there seems to be a problem with their systems.”
It is understood Melbourne Airport only experienced a slight outage but was not affected by delays.
The ABF has been contacted for further comment.