At several airports, including Paris Aeroports (Roissi-Charles de Gaulle and Orly), passengers experienced longer waiting times at border crossings due to a national disruption on Monday. The outage lasted three hours before returning to normal around 3 a.m., according to Paris Aeroports. The computer system used by the Border Police suffered a malfunction, affecting the Parafa airlocks on departure and arrival at the airports. These airlocks enable automated screening of passengers entering and leaving the Schengen Area, and the disruption was expected to increase waiting times for departures and arrivals.
The Parafe system, which allows for border crossing formalities to be carried out in an automated, fluid, and fast manner, is used at several French airports as well as train stations and the port of Calais. While the outage was national in scope, only Paris Airport announced it. At the same time, air travel has been disrupted by a national social movement, with cancellations and delays expected throughout the day.
The General Directorate of Civil Aviation has advised passengers to postpone their flights. Waiting times at border control were estimated to be an average of 40 minutes per hour, and Paris Airports apologized to passengers in line. Throughout the day, hundreds of people waited in line at the border control, causing inconvenience to many.
Despite some confusion caused by only some airports communicating the situation while others did not, passengers were assured that the situation would return to normal as soon as possible.