Travelers have been warned to expect long delays at airports across the country due to a national software outage.
There is a technical outage affecting SmartGate kiosks for incoming and outgoing passengers at international airports nationwide.
This means passengers at Adelaide, Brisbane, Cairns, Darwin, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney airports will likely be affected.
Sydney Airport said there were long immigration delays “due to a national disruption affecting Australian Border Force processing systems”.
“Passengers are being processed manually and although incoming and outgoing queues are longer than usual, no flights have been affected,” an airport spokesperson added.
“Passengers traveling today are advised to check with their airline regarding the status of their flight and to allow sufficient time to travel to international terminal T1.”
Dozens of travelers took to social media to express their frustration.
“Sydney airport is crazy right now, the queue has around 700 people waiting to clear customs,” said one.
Another said there were “major delays at Australian international airports due to the PassPort system failing”.
Images from Sydney airport showed huge queues
Travelers have been warned to expect delays.
People reported huge queues at Sydney airport
“Me and thousands of others were stuck in Sydney.”
An Australian Border Force spokesperson said “additional ABF officers are being deployed to work areas to manually process passengers and provide as little disruption as possible.”
“The issue is currently being resolved and systems are slowly coming back online,” they added.
