International travellers experienced widespread delays across the country on Sunday after a nationwide passport system outage forced the Australian Border Force to manually process passengers — but the issue has now been resolved.
A Melbourne Airport spokesperson told the ABC earlier that the ABF was grappling with a system-wide failure affecting all inbound and outbound travellers, prompting officers to switch to manual checks and prioritise flights to manage surging queues.
“(The) ABF is processing passengers manually,” the spokesperson said at the time.
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“We are currently prioritising flights to manage passenger flows.
“We appreciate passengers’ patience as ABF works to resolve this issue.”
Long lines formed at terminals across multiple airports as staff worked through passengers one by one, with travellers warned to expect significant delays.
In an updated statement, the Australian Border Force confirmed it had been “working to restore a technical system outage, impacting passengers nationwide this morning,” but said the issue had now been fixed.
“The issue has been resolved at all airports and all systems are back online,” the ABF said.
“The cause of the technical issue remains under investigation.
“We wish to thank travellers for their patience during this time.”
