The chief executive officer of Franco-Dutch airline group Air France-KLM urged French authorities on Saturday to take "urgent" measures to reduce delays for passengers caused by security checks at Paris airports. The delays caused by police checks, in a country that was hit by deadly Islamist militant attacks in the last two years, come at a time when passenger traffic is picking up ahead of the crucial summer holiday season, according to Jean-Marc Janaillac.
Janaillac told Reuters in an interview he had written to the French interior minister urging him to take quick measures. The queues at the police filters at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, the country's largest in the north of the capital and Orly, in the south, can take more than two ours, Janaillac said. "Waiting times at police checks are very, very long, sometimes more than an hour and a half at Roissy and can go over two hours at Orly, which totally disrupts the transport chain and contributes to flight delays," he added.
Janaillac called on French authorities to allow a greater use of facial recognition technologies that exist in London or Amsterdam, hire more air and border police and to ease on passport checks to some destinations. The French interior ministry did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. Tourism, a large source of income for the country, has gradually rebounded after the attacks in Paris and the Riviera city of Nice caused a sharp slump last year.
"Traffic, as is the case for all companies, is indeed dynamic right now," Janaillac said on the sidelines of an economic forum in Aix-en-Provence. "There is a positive trend in the second quarter," he added. The airline group will publish its traffic figures on Monday.
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