Key Takeaways
- Major Australian airports experienced a significant technical failure, disrupting automated identity kiosks and facial recognition systems.
- The Australian Border Force quickly added staff to manually process travelers, yet long queues still persisted.
- While systems are gradually coming back online, there is no clear timeline for full resolution.
A major technical glitch brought Australia’s top airports to a standstill, causing extensive delays as automated identity and facial recognition kiosks stopped functioning. With thousands of passengers at a standstill, Australia’s Border Force swiftly increased staffing to manage the situation through manual processing, yet this proved insufficient to fully alleviate the backlog.
Though systems have started a slow return to functionality, there is currently no specified timeframe for complete restoration. The incident has underscored vulnerabilities in the automation systems at major transportation hubs, reminding all of the critical need for robust backup measures.