Passengers flying out of Australia are being told to head to the airport as planned, despite a computer systems outage affecting inbound and outbound travellers.

The Australian Border Force says it’s working with the Department of Home Affairs to resolve the IT systems outage affecting SmartGate passport control machines, meaning passengers must be manually processed.

“Additional ABF staff have been deployed to process passengers and to minimise delays,” an Australian Border Force spokesman said on Monday.

A Melbourne Airport spokeswoman said travellers should still head to the airport as per their original plans.

“Within the terminal, we’ll be continuing to make public address announcements every few minutes, so please pay attention to these announcements for the latest updates,” she said in a statement to AAP.

“We’re extremely appreciative of the patience and good grace shown by passengers this morning and we would like to thank everyone for sticking with us during this period.”

Passenger Elena earlier told 3AW radio the issue is causing long delays at immigration at Melbourne Airport.

“About four planes have landed, I reckon there’s 500-600 people here.

“It’s just ridiculous.”

Pictures posted on social media showed long queues at Sydney and Melbourne airports for passengers arriving and trying to depart. Frustrated travellers described the scenes as “chaos” and “a circus”.

Emergency supplies are coming out at Sydney Airport. Feel like we’re going to be here a while. pic.twitter.com/hLCI6W4JML — Annabelle Regan (@regan_annabelle) April 28, 2019

Travelling out of @SydneyAirport international T1 today leave plenty of time. Renovations at immigration mean looooong queues. It’s a circus. pic.twitter.com/OmeP48v6VD — Brad Hodson (@bradhodson) April 28, 2019

Just arrived at Melbourne Airport from Vietnam - absolutely HUGE queue to get through immigration, goes all the way through duty free. “Delays are expected as passengers need to be manually processed” #MelbourneAirport pic.twitter.com/V36CeYKTj1 — Monte Bovill (@MonteBovill) April 28, 2019