The "Direction de la Police aux Frontières" (head of French Border Police) and Groupe ADP have joined forces to draw up a monthly report on the waiting times encountered by passengers at the various border control points at Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly Airports.
General trend observed in February 2024 [1]:
For the record, the maximum waiting times at the Border Police in airports, targeted by the French Prime Minister - during the inter-ministerial council on tourism on 26th July 2017 -, are 30 minutes for European nationals and 45 minutes for non-Europeans.
- At Paris-Charles de Gaulle: out of nearly 2,3 million passengers on international flights [2], 3% waited less than 10 minutes, 10.8% between 10 and 30 minutes, 0.7% between 30 and 45 minutes and 0.2% more than 45minutes.
- At Paris-Orly: out of nearly 868,000 passengers on international flights, 2% waited less than 10 minutes, 7.4 % between 10 and 30 minutes, 0.3% between 30 and 45 minutes and less than 0.1% waited 45 minutes or more.
Events resulting in waiting times of over 30 minutes [3]:
At Paris-Charles de Gaulle /
Week 6: 14 events impacting around 3,850 passengers, with an average waiting time of 44 minutes.
Week 7: 9 events impacting around 1,960 passengers, with an average waiting time of 42 minutes.
Week 8: 6 events impacting around 970 passengers, with an average waiting time of 46 minutes.
Week 9: 28 events impacting around 10,070 passengers, with an average time of 42 minutes.
At Paris-Orly /
Week 6: 4 events impacting around 710 passengers, with an average waiting time of 41 minutes.
Week 7: 1 event impacting around 100 passengers, with an average waiting time of 37 minutes.
Week 8: 6 events impacting around 590 passengers, with an average waiting time of 38 minutes.
Week 9: 8 events impacting around 960 passengers, with an average waiting time of 41 minutes.
Focus on some events:
- Saturday, February 24th, (weekend after Parisian school vacations), arrivals at Terminal 2E at Paris-Charles de Gaulle were confronted throughout the morning with an unprecedented peak of 3,900 passengers per hour. To compare, on the five busiest days of summer 2023, the highest passenger flows were between 3,150 and 3,500 passengers per hour.
These figures for February 24th can be explained by the arrival of some 30 wide-bodied aircraft in three hours, and an unusual low-pressure weather phenomenon in the North Atlantic that caused transatlantic flights to arrive well ahead of schedule. Thanks to the 100% arming of control booths by the Border Police and the mobilization of reception staff, who maximized the use of PARAFE airlocks, waiting times were around thirty minutes for most passengers.
- Monday, February 26th, arrivals at Terminal 2E at Paris-Charles de Gaulle, in the morning, another exceptional peak in passenger arrivals. The same meteorological phenomenon encountered the previous weekend, bringing forward the arrival of transatlantic flights, was repeated, creating an unusually high peak in passenger arrivals (3,500 passengers per hour). As not all checkpoints were operational (80% of armed gates), some 1,600 passengers not eligible for PARAFE airlocks had to wait up to 50 minutes
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Border Police recruits 180 new border guards to reinforce Paris airports In February, the National border police department (DNPAF) opened up 200 administrative border guard positions to be filled in the Paris region: 180 will reinforce the workforce at Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly, and 20 will be assigned to Gare du Nord. These reinforcements will be hired and trained by summer 2024. |
Details of monthly results for February 2024 regarding Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly:
Methodology: real time data from counting sensors
Since 2019, Groupe ADP has deployed tools to monitor and control passenger flows and waiting times. In particular, sensors allowing the number of passengers to be counted in real time in a queue have been deployed to equip the border crossing and safety control areas of Paris Airports.
This is a real-time measurement tool that is automatically updated every five seconds. It counts the number of passengers in a queue by measuring how long the last person to leave the queue has been waiting. Between 80 and 200 sensors are needed to cover an area, depending on its size.
The data is fed into an operational performance monitoring tool that analyses what has happened in an operational day. It is the data extracted from these sensors that is used to set up this barometer.
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[1] In January 2024: at Paris-Charles de Gaulle, out of nearly 2.7 million international passengers, 86.7% waited less than 10 minutes, 1.8% between 10 and 30 minutes, 1.1% between 30 and 45 minutes, and 0.4% more than 45 minutes. At Paris-Orly, out of nearly 967,800 international passengers, 91.8% waited less than 10 minutes, 7.9% between 10 and 30 minutes, 0.2% between 30 and 45 minutes and less than 0.1% more than 45 minutes.
[2] Passengers who have crossed a border on departure, on connection or on arrival at Paris-Charles de Gaulle or Paris-Orly are taken into account (not therefore passengers on domestic or Schengen flights).
[3] Events impacting more than 50 passengers per calendar week are included. Two occurrences must be separated by 20 minutes, otherwise only one event is counted.
