Airport kiosk glitch fixed but cause remains a mystery

File photo of travellers at a departure area of an airport
A major outage that delayed passengers at international airport terminals has been fixed. -AAP Image

An Australia-wide outage at international airport immigration gates has been resolved but border force is still investigating the source of the issue.

Melbourne and Sydney airports were heavily impacted by the technical outage at SmartGate kiosks for inbound and outbound passengers on Friday morning, with three departures out of Melbourne delayed.

The Australian Border Force said the outage has since resolved at all airports and systems were back online by midday AEDT, however they are yet to find the source.

"The cause of the technical issue remains under investigation," a spokesperson said.

"We wish to thank travellers for their patience during this incident."

The Australian Border Force has been working to restore a technical outage impacting both inbound and outbound passengers at international airports nationwide this morning (Friday 8 November 2024).— ABF (@AusBorderForce) As of midday AEDT, the issue has been resolved at all airports and all systems… https://t.co/WH7m7oTTWt pic.twitter.com/HmVKKDcpehNovember 8, 2024

The Australian Border Force sent additional officers to airports to manually process passengers and ensure "as minimal disruption as possible".

Both Melbourne and Sydney airports confirmed delays had subsided and no flights had to be cancelled, although three international departures were delayed from Melbourne.

Brisbane airport spokesperson Peter Doherty thanked passengers for their patience during the morning's peak period.

"During the outage passengers were processed manually by Australian Border Force, which took additional time for both inbound and outbound travellers," he said.

AAP was told there were no issues at Gold Coast, Cairns and Canberra airports.

Darwin, Perth and Hobart airports are yet to respond to AAP.