by Hundreds of displaced airport passengers have arrived at the Port of Dover to try to avoid the chaos caused by the global computer outage.
Authorities warned people not to go to the port without a reservation on Saturday as thousands of families scramble to get to Europe at the start of the summer holidays.
Around 200,000 people are set to be hit by delays and cancellations due to the IT crisis on Friday, which was triggered by a faulty update to a widely used piece of cyber security software. Many travel insurers are refusing to pay for rescheduling holidays.
NHS services, train services, cash machines and contactless payments were also taken offline, and the 999 service experienced long delays after GP surgeries were unable to make appointments.
Airports have said their systems are back up and running after global IT outages caused problems, but cancellations and delays could still disrupt journeys.
As a result many people went to the English Channel port hoping to cross the continent.
But the Port of Dover has warned that while it is processing traffic well, passengers were already waiting 60 minutes to go through border controls on Saturday morning.
The worldwide IT outage was caused by a glitch in the cyber security software made by CrowdStrike, a US company, which caused millions of computers running Microsoft Windows to suddenly crash on Friday morning.
The result was the so-called “blue screen of death”, which put the computers into recovery mode.
On Saturday morning, P&O Ferries warned of high volumes of traffic causing congestion on the roads leading to the port.
They advised passengers to allow extra time when traveling and to bring refreshments.
Irish Ferries also told passengers to allow enough time to complete border controls and check-in.
DFDS warned X, formerly known as Twitter, of waiting times of up to 120 minutes at border controls and 30 minutes at check-in, while Dover told passengers to ensure they had good provisions, including water, food and prescription medications.
At Dover Operation Brock, the traffic holding system was deployed for lorries queuing to cross the Channel on the M20 towards the port.
Travel association Abta urged holidaymakers to check with suppliers if there were any extra steps they needed to take.
A spokesman said: “We are at the start of one of the busiest travel periods, with some schools finishing for the summer yesterday and many more next week.
“A lot of people will be flying abroad – trying to escape the unseasonal UK weather of late.
“Spain, Turkey and Greece are among the most popular destinations for overseas trips.
“If you are going on holiday this weekend – by any means – you are advised to check with your travel provider if there are any additional steps to take, as some businesses are still feeling the impact of the IT outage Friday.”
Eurotunnel warned of around 30 minute delays at times at the Folkestone terminal on Saturday morning.
Long delays continued for airport passengers to board outbound or return flights to and from the UK.
Andrew Evans, from Taunton in Somerset, said he had been waiting for more than nine hours at Palma de Mallorca airport and claimed there had been little communication from airline operator TUI.
His flight to Exeter, due to take off at 2.05am local time (1.05am UK time), had still not boarded at around 10.30am local time on Saturday morning.
“Our holiday completely fell apart at the end – it feels like we’ve been abandoned,” said Mr Evans.
Meanwhile, passengers on a Ryanair flight from Bristol to Portugal reported arriving at their destination only to find that no checked baggage had been loaded onto the plane.
TUI said its IT systems were “unstable” and apologized to passengers.
There were also long queues to board at Heathrow, where the British Airways app did not allow passengers to check in, nor did the automated check-in desk.
Chris Shaw, 61, a London-based consultant, boarded a replacement British Airways flight from Heathrow to Berlin at 8.45am on Saturday after his original evening flight to the German city on Friday was cancelled.
“The queue [for check-in] It was so long that we would have missed the flight, which was clearly overcalculated,” he said.
“So I pushed in and insisted on being dealt with. The flight was completely full, so if I didn’t push in, we wouldn’t even have seats.
“We reached the gate with 20 minutes to spare. Security was excellent and fast, but my criticism of Heathrow was the lack of information and the staff being very poorly informed.
“There was no priority given to urgent flight needs or even notice boards telling passengers where to go or what to do.”
Indie rock band Bombay Bicycle Club had to reschedule an appearance at the Poolbar Festival in the Austrian town of Feldkirch on Friday when their flight was canceled due to the outage.
Louise Haigh, the Transport Secretary, said the airports’ IT systems were “back and working normally”.
“We are always in communication with the industry,” she said. “There are no known safety or security issues yet arising from the outage. Some delays and a small number of canceled flights are expected today.”
‘More preparation needed for future breaks’
Experts said the chaos seen after the outage should serve as a warning that organizations need to prepare for more widespread IT outages in the future.
Professor Ciaran Martin, former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, warned that countries would have to “learn how to deal” with future breaches.
He said: “The worst of this is over because of the nature of the crisis it went very badly wrong, very quickly. It was seen quickly, and basically, it was extinguished.”
Professor Martin told Sky News: “Until governments and industry come together and work out how to design some of these defects, I’m afraid we’re likely to see more of these again.
“Within countries like the UK and other parts of Europe, you can try to build that national resilience to deal with this. But ultimately, much of this will be decided in the United States.
“If there’s going to be regulation to try to fix these flaws, it’s probably going to have to come from the United States and there’s not much we can do about that.
“So unless and until the structure of the way we do technology changes, we’re going to have to learn to deal with these things, rather than eliminate them.”
One computer scientist has said that people need to draw similar lessons from the global IT meltdown as they did from the pandemic.
Sir Nigel Shadbolt told the BBC’s Today programme: “These issues often leave (the) tech elite.
“This affects everyone and we need to understand how those effects play out in society and think about how we all make ourselves more resilient.”
He added: “The resilience of these systems in general is something very special. We rely on these systems and by and large they are working to very high quality levels.
“But when they go wrong, and it’s like a pandemic, we should draw similar lessons, what lessons do we draw?
“As individuals, what should we be thinking? We should be thinking about the level of resilience in our own lives. We should think about maybe having multiple systems, not relying on one.”
