Australian Border Force suffered an “IT glitch” on Monday morning that took down its passport control systems and caused lengthy delays at immigration.
Social media posts showed that the problems started at about 6am at airports including Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, with flow-on effects felt by travellers throughout the morning.
A Border Force spokesperson would not answer questions when reached by phone.
10daily reported that the problems were a result of an unspecified “IT glitch”.
One traveller tweeted the cause was a "technical issue" with passport machines.
In a brief statement, a spokesperson for the agency said the problems had since been fixed.
"Australian Border Force staff are working hard to minimise earlier delays caused by an earlier outage," the spokesperson said.
"All issues have now been rectified. We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused travellers."
It’s the second time in less than three months that a nationwide outage of the SmartGate system has impacted travellers.
In late April, the agency was forced to revert to manual processing to keep queues moving, and it appeared today’s problems led to a repeat.
The glitch with existing systems came the same day as iTnews revealed the rollout of new facial biometrics-ready SmartGates for arrivals had stalled after the Department of Home Affairs opted to pause the only operational trial.
