There have been hours of long queues and lengthy delays at some of the country’s busiest airports after a nationwide outage hit immigration systems.

The Australian Border Force morning brought in extra staff to process passengers manually on Friday morning after a technical outage affected SmartGate kiosks for inbound and outbound passengers at international airports.

Passengers were being manually processed, a spokesperson said, and more staff had been sent to ensure “as minimal disruption as possible”.

“The issue is currently being rectified and systems are slowly returning online,” the spokesperson said.

“We appreciate travellers’ patience as we continue to work through the issue.”

At its height, queues in Sydney were reportedly up to 700 people long.

The Australian Border Force is aware of a technical outage impacting SmartGate kiosks for outbound and inbound passengers at international airports nationwide today (Friday 8 November 2024).

Additional ABF officers are being surged into work areas to manually process passengers… pic.twitter.com/Axtxgcyitt

— ABF (@AusBorderForce) November 8, 2024

A Melbourne Airport spokesperson said passengers faced “lengthy delays”.

A Sydney Airport spokesperson said flights were unaffected but inbound and outbound queues were longer than usual.

“We apologise for the disruption and appreciate everyone’s patience as the issue is being resolved,” they said.

People going into and out of the airport were encouraged to check with their airline on the status of their flight, and leave plenty of time when travelling.

The ABF said the issue had been resolved by early Friday afternoon.

-with AAP