Passport out-of-control at French airport

BORK!BORK!BORK! Europe's airports can be a minefield for the unwary traveler, especially when that traveler inserts a passport into a waiting kiosk and finds Windows staring back.

An eagle-eyed Register reader (they said we could use their name, but we will keep them anonymous for fear of them being added to some sort of list) encountered the Windows desktop where it probably didn't belong this month, while traveling through that little-known French provincial airport: Paris-Charles de Gaulle.

Our reader was making their way through the airport after returning from holiday. They told us, "I was about to go through a PARAFE gate (the French equivalent of the British ePassport gates) when suddenly, right after I inserted my passport, the system crashed and rebooted."

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Where there had been an instruction to insert a passport and hope you looked enough like your picture that a Gendarme didn't show up with a rubber glove and an invitation to the special room, there was now a Windows desktop (Windows 11, by our reckoning) and a closed gate. Eventually, somebody launched the appropriate application (not in person, our reader told us), and the queue could shuffle forward again.

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Paris-Charles de Gaulle is a special airport. While our reader had the Windows experience in Terminal 3, this writer missed an April flight to the UK from Terminal 2 after another computer whoopsie at passport control caused an impressive delay.

At the time, an airport spokesperson said, "We can confirm these days, the police encountered IT issues affecting their passport verification system, which may have caused significant delays in passenger processing."

A great comfort, as a certain airline with orange livery shut up shop for the night. After all, it wasn't their systems that had succumbed to a wave from Le Bork fairy's wand.

We've noted a bit of a run on airport borks of late. Sometimes signage shows things it shouldn't, or boards indicate that cost-cutting has perhaps gone too far. The curse of bork spreading to border control, however, is something new. But it remains reassuring to remember that, even as security is tightened and regulations made more onerous, Windows can still be guaranteed to pop up in the most unexpected places. ®