Paris welcomes the world from this Friday, July 26 and for the entire duration of the Olympic Games. Fifteen million visitors and nearly 15,000 athletes are expected, so Parisian airports are in high demand. To facilitate the reception of passengers, 1,500 volunteers have been deployed by the Aéroports de Paris group.
Providing information, guidance, and reassurance, this is the mission of Jeannette Deric, who volunteered to help travelers arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport. Today, with her red vest, she walks the aisles of Terminal 2. This is not my environment at all, she explainsI work at the head office, in the innovation department and there, it really allows me to participate in the success of these Olympic Games. I didn’t hesitate for a single moment. » Jeannette never stops for a minute: delegations, athletes, tourists… she brings the right information to each person. They are quite lost because they are looking for taxis or buses, confides Jeannette Dericthe toilets too of course. But that’s a bit normal because we’re always a bit lost when we’re not in our own country. »
A few dozen meters away, Mohamed Benarbia is posted facing the arrivals gates. This management controller has also decided to wear the volunteers’ red vest: ” You have delegations that come with several dozen people, which can create a kind of traffic jam. And our role is to make all the areas of the Charles de Gaulle platform as fluid as possible. » The volunteer specifies the issues : “ Everything that is waiting time, etc., to make it more fluid, whether at the start, where people want to get to their boarding gate very quickly, or at the finish, where people are in a hurry to get home. So, it is a real issue and it is a real challenge for us. »
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1,500 Aéroports de Paris employees volunteer for the Olympic Games
Like Jeannette and Mohamed, there are 1,500 employees of Aéroports de Paris lending a hand in the terminals, for a bonus of around fifty euros per day. Faustine Colle is responsible for the volunteer program: ” We trained the volunteers because they come from completely different directions within the group. Their original job may not be related to the operation at all, so we went to train them with classroom training, but also field visits, full-scale exercises. We came to test the infrastructure and all that, it happened until June. And now, July, to welcome the athletes on a daily basis.
Despite everything, there were some inevitable little hiccups, taken with humor by Morten Henriksen, the head of the Danish handball delegation: ” 10 of our bags were lost, but luckily no player forgot their handball shoes… he laughs,so we will be ready ! » Let us rest assured, in the vast majority of cases, everything goes well, as for Smail Douzi, from the Algerian cycling delegation: ” Already, the reception was great. We got our accreditations.
After arrivals, the next critical period for airports will be departures… in two weeks!
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