Travellers going through Australian airports were temporarily delayed on Sunday after a nationwide passport system outage.The Australian Border Force said that a “technical system outage” impacted passengers across the country. The issue has since been resolved.“The Australian Border Force has been working to restore a technical system outage, impacting passengers nationwide this morning,” a spokesperson told SBS News.“The issue has been resolved at all airports and all systems are back online.”
The spokesperson said the cause of the technical issue remained under investigation.
Melbourne Airport told SBS News it was “currently prioritising flights to manage passenger flows as we work to ease congestion.” It’s understood the outage left the ABF manually processing passengers for about an hour.Sydney Airport said it had deployed additional staff to the terminals to assist passengers and bring them forward in order of flight priority.A spokesperson for Perth Airport told SBS no flights had been delayed because of the “ABF processing issue”.Some passengers vented their frustration on social media. One person on X said they’d been stuck at Brisbane airport for more than half an hour.Jetstar warned travellers “to see further disruptions today and probably minor disruptions tomorrow”.
