Australian Border Force probes 14-hour e-gate collapse that left Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane airports in chaos

From the Newshound archive · first published 19 September 2026.

A 14-hour e-gate outage crippled international terminals at Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane airports overnight, forcing Australian Border Force officers to manually process thousands of passengers amid massive queues. The disruption began around 9pm Thursday and was only resolved after 11am Friday, with ABF confirming all backlogs were cleared. The cause remains under investigation.

The outage struck at the worst possible moment — the start of school holidays in Queensland and Victoria, when airports were bracing for a 6.1 per cent surge in international passengers.

ABF surged additional officers into terminals to process travellers by hand, as photos showed queues snaking through check-in areas and spilling across entire terminal floors.

Brisbane Airport had just opened a brand-new 12-lane passport control facility specifically designed to ease holiday congestion — only for the e-gate failure to overwhelm it on day one.