Travellers stuck at airports after NHS app goes down

PASSENGERS have been left stranded at airports after the NHS app went down leaving them without access to vaccine passports.

Travellers reported being barred from flights and being stuck abroad after the app crashed for around four hours yesterday.

The outage meant people were unable to load their Covid pass proving they had had their vaccine shots, proof of which is needed for travel abroad.

One passenger, Chuck Adolphy described how the glitch caused his “dream holiday” to descend into “shambles” yesterday morning as he and his girlfriend attempted to board a flight from Gatwick to Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana, before being turned away.

“Went to go on the app and my Covid pass wasn’t appearing,” he said. “Didn’t even realise at the time there was an outage and was just turned away and told they couldn’t do anything about it.

“Rang the number and they said the app and site are down and there is nothing they can do. Easyjet said nothing either. Showed them my vaccine card and nothing.”

Another passenger, Henry Martin, said the glitch has left him stranded in Greece and called for compensation from the Government. He said: “This has been an absolute nightmare. We’re stuck here in Greece as they wouldn’t let us on [our] plane without a pass – are you going to reimburse us for the missed flights and hotel?”

The NHS app has gained more than 10 million new users in recent months as it became the platform for accessing the pass. The app allows passengers to download their Covid passes, which can also be issued in paper form, as PDFS to be added to their smartphone wallets.

However, this would have had to have been done by passengers before the app went down.

Following the outage, a spokesman for NHS Digital, which runs the app, said: “The NHS Covid pass service was temporarily unavailable between 11:45 and 15:15 today as a result of a technical issue with a global service provider that affected many different organisations.

“Following an urgent investigation, this has been fixed and Covid passes are available via the NHS app and online.”