Delays in several French airports over e-gate malfunction

A nationwide malfunction in France’s automatic passport gate system has caused delays lasting up to an hour in several airports and in Gare du Nord today (June 1).

Affected transport terminals also include Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly.

The disruption is due to a fault in the Parafe system, which is controlled by Police aux Frontières and which enables passengers to have their passports checked by a machine using facial recognition.

Paris-Aéroport said that issues first began occurring yesterday evening (May 31), “without causing any impact” to passengers at the time.

The system went down earlier this morning, when the machines were temporarily unable to consult computer files and people were left stranded inside the e-gate booths.

However, Paris-Aéroport tweeted at 14:20 that it is now back up and running and passenger traffic is progressively returning to normal.

While for some, this shutdown resulted in delays of over an hour, others were only kept waiting for 20 minutes or so.

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