This outage is causing longer than usual wait times for international passengers.
A computer failure affected border controls at the Paris airports of Roissy-Charles de Gaulle and Orly at midday on Saturday, causing longer than usual waiting times for passengers.
“A national border police outage is currently affecting checkpoints departing from and arriving at Paris-CDG and Paris-Orly. A longer waiting time is to be expected,” Aéroports de Paris tweeted around noon. .
It was not immediately known whether this outage also affected other airports or sectors.
“It is shameful”
Images posted on social networks showed large queues of passengers waiting at Paris airport controls, treading water or sitting on the ground.
Around 2:00 p.m., the computer system in question was working once more, the Interior Ministry told AFP.
Coming from Martinique, a passenger assured AFP that she had spent nearly two hours in the queue at Orly where “1,500-2,000 people” were not advancing an inch.
“It’s shameful, people are starting to freak out, especially parents with children. No one from ADP (Aéroports de Paris) has come to tell us anything!”, Anouk testified by telephone, who preferred to conceal his name.
In general nervousness, the travelers then began to bang on the glass doors of the airlocks, she then reported. Border Police (PAF) officers then opened them and carried out passport checks manually to ease the congestion.
“Everything is in place to make the situation as difficult as possible for travellers. Water distributions are in place and agents have been deployed to answer travellers’ questions,” a doorman told AFP. -word of ADP.
The outage was caused by an operation by the interministerial digital department, which coordinates the information systems of the administrations, on the interministerial network of the State, a source familiar with the matter told AFP.