Electronic passport gates across UK airports have gone down.

The outage has caused chaos for travelers at airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, and Manchester, just as many try to leave for the extended bank holiday weekend break.

“We are aware of a nationwide border system issue affecting arrivals into the UK," a Home Office spokesperson said.

“We are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible and are liaising with port operators and airlines to minimise disruption for travellers.”

Passengers are still able to get their passports checked manually, but the process is slow and can cause lengthy queues.

At the same time, a French IT outage has caused lengthy traffic jams at Dover.

The issue comes just days after a British Airways IT systems failure at Heathrow, which led to the cancelation of 175 flights and impacted more than 20,000 passengers.