A severe weather warning and computer glitches caused chaos and mass disruptions at Sydney and Melbourne airports on Friday.

Strong winds at Sydney Airport left thousands of travellers stranded with nearly 30 flights cancelled and numerous delays.

At 12.30pm, the airport posted on its official Twitter channel that it was “still experiencing domestic and international flight delays.”

At the same time, hundreds of airport passengers in Melbourne were  left furious after some self-serve kiosk systems crashed, causing up to two-hour delays on Friday morning.

One passenger arriving into Melbourne on Friday told The New Daily there was “absolute havoc”, with long delays and crowds of people unable to get through customs.

Qantas passenger Bianca Bedford of Melbourne said travellers were frustrated and stressed about missing connecting domestic flights.

“I’ve never seen it such as mess before. It took more than an hour to get through and that was before reaching customs,” Ms Bedford said.

“It’s embarrassing. The first impression international visitors arriving in Melbourne are getting is computers failing and huge queues,” she said.

Self-service kiosks’ systems crashed causing havoc at Melbourne Airport. Photo: TND

A Melbourne Airport spokesman said airport staff were aware of the delays being experienced by international passengers arriving into Melbourne.

“We’re looking into the cause of this and we appreciate the patience shown by passengers,” the spokesman told The New Daily.

Meanwhile, Sydney’s domestic and international airport was reduced to one runway, impacting travellers leaving and arriving in the harbour city.

“International and Domestic terminals are experiencing some flight delays. Please contact your airline for more information,” the airport tweeted on Friday morning.

Up to 28 domestic flights were cancelled and there are numerous delays, including international flights.

Jetstar, Virgin, Qantas and TigerAir have all been affected.

“Our priority is getting as many people as we can to where they need to be and we have all staff on,” a Virgin Australia spokeswoman told AAP.

https://twitter.com/ExSecular/status/1065774289188618241

https://twitter.com/lenman74/status/1065714556427657217

Virgin Australia, Jetstar and Qantas said the strong westerly winds in Sydney as well as the added impact of storms in Melbourne were affecting all airlines.

“This may also affect flights arriving and departing into other destinations across the network.”

Australian Border Force has been contacted for comment.