Australia’s immigration SmartGates went down for several hours today after an outage hit the Australian Border Force’s (ABF) kiosk systems. 

International airports, including Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, were affected by the outage, which forced manual processing of passengers. 

Extra ABF officers were brought in for manual processing and to minimise traveller disruption.

According to the ABC, there were lengthy queues at Sydney and Melbourne international airports.

It’s understood Melbourne Airport recorded roughly around 1000 passengers affected by the outage alongside three departure flights out of the city also were delayed.

As of midday AEDT, the systems were all back online, the ABF told iTnews. 

“The Australian Border Force has been working to restore a technical outage impacting both inbound and outbound passengers at international airports nationwide this morning,” a spokesperson said. 

“As of midday AEDT, the issue has been resolved at all airports and all systems are back online.

“The cause of the technical issue remains under investigation. We wish to thank travellers for their patience during this incident.”