Vinci Airports and the French border police have been working together to streamline the passenger journey at Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport.
Since June 2023, 40 further personnel have strengthened the border police staff responsible for cross-border controls at the airport. In addition, the PARAFE facial recognition system has been expanded to include more countries, speeding up the time it takes to pass through security. The system now accepts automatic biometric processing of nationals from eight countries outside the European Union (Australia, Canada, South Korea, the USA, New Zealand, the UK, Singapore and Japan) in addition to the EU countries already accepted by PARAFE. The airport says the number of countries eligible for the system will continue to increase in the coming weeks “in line with regulations and technological developments”.
These changes have led to actual improvements. On December 6, Lyon-Saint Exupéry reported that in October and November 2024, 87.32% and 90.79% of checks were carried out in less than 10 minutes, respectively.
It is worth noting that the maximum waiting time targets at border police checkpoints in French airports are 30 minutes for European Union nationals and 45 minutes for non-EU citizens.
To further increase the efficiency of the security process, the Lyon airport introduced ZenLine on November 27. This is a new service that enables passengers with a flight departing from Terminal 1 to pre-book their time slot to go through security checks. This free service, accessible via the Lyon airport website and mobile application, can be booked between seven days and 24 hours before departure. The system identifies and offers slots been on calculations that draw on flight schedule, aircraft occupancy, crowds and other data.
For more about the airport’s biometric program, read our interview with Pascal Deborde, project manager at Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport here.