Border force IT chaos caused 'by Home Office failing to tell BT it was updating ... trends now
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The e-gate airport chaos that left thousands of Brits stranded across the UK's busiest airports was caused by the Home Office 'failing to tell BT it was updating its software'.
The main Border Force security database - called 'Border Crossing' which was introduced just under three years ago at a cost of £372million – suffered a complete shutdown earlier this week.
Border Force officers were forced to check passports manually against back-up databases as e-gates were unable to function without access to the IT system.
Now, it has been revealed that the Home Office Wi-Fi outage, which is suspected to have caused the e-gates to crash, was caused because it failed to tell BT about a software update, the Telegraph reports.
It is believed that the update 'overloaded' the Home Office network, which then snowballed into causing the e-gate chaos on Tuesday.
The airport e-gate chaos is believed to have been caused by a Home Office software update blunder. Pictured: Broken automatic passport scanning gates at Gatwick Airport
Gatwick Airport on Tuesday night at passport control after a nationwide IT system collapse
Huge queues formed at Gatwick (pictured) and other UK airports, with people forced to wait for hours
It is the fourth major malfunction of the system – supported by
