Client Overview
Deauville – Normandie Airport – previously known as Deauville – Saint-Gatien Airport – is a small international airport situated 7 km east of Deauville, a commune of the Calvados department in the Normandy region of France. The airport is part of a small network of other airports including, Caen-Carpiquet, Rouen Airport, and Le Havre Airport – Octeville.
Less than 2 hours from Paris, the airport has a 2550-meter runway with all the technical specifications to receive medium-haul traffic, regular airlines, charters, and private aviation. A key success factor for the airport is the handling of all types of large aircrafts with a parking area of 33,000 m² while having the capacity to accommodate more than 160,000 passengers annually.

The Challenge
Assessing the condition and monitoring airline specific parameters (i.e., flight number, time, flight status, aircraft type, origin, and destination) constitute important parts of the passenger processing journey. In this project, Deauville – Normandie Airport wanted to gain an in-depth understanding to better manage the passenger processing from the import of passenger lists to passenger check-in and baggage drop to security and the boarding gate.
The client had previously commissioned a local DCS but had met with poor operations, confusing operator interface for DCS control, lack of scalability, and major support issues. When the local provider stopped the DCS report, Deauville – Normandie could not create and manage seat maps for aircrafts in an ergonomic graphical user interface; display information via airport’s AODB interface; and read and check the validity of identity documents (e.g., passports, national identity cards, VISA). Deauville – Normandie knew this was critical for deploying solutions to enhance passengers’ traveling experience, improve efficiencies, and reduce operating costs.
Understanding the need to use accurate data, share information across the airport, and automate repeatable tasks led Deauville – Normandie to look towards Local Departure Control System technology to support their journey.
The Solution
To address the challenge, Deauville – Normandie Airport partnered with Embross for better passenger control. Combining our best in-class solutions with a 20+ year track record, Embross assessed Deauville – Normandie’s processes and advised on areas to improve.
Deauville – Normandie can now plan their airport operations with Embross’ Odyssey L-DCS (Local Departure Control System). In addition, the team at Embross added an extra layer to the deployment, its leading Odyssey CUPPS platform. This will allow Deauville – Normandie to have a DCS of some of their airlines directly within their system. This provides airlines the choice of applications to install on the platform with confidence.
With the new solution, Deauville – Normandie will now be able to:
– Manage passenger flow via check-in and baggage drop to security and boarding gate
– Enable border agents to board a passenger by reading 2D barcodes on boarding passes
– Standardize their technical requirements, leading to cost savings and faster deployment
– Send customized reports of real-time changes directly to project stakeholders
“The Odyssey L-DCS solution by Embross is very ergonomic and easy to use. This made it much easier for us to train our temporary check-in agents during the summer period.”
Maryline Haize-Hagron – Director of Caen-Carpiquet and Deauville-Normandie in France
The Result
Deauville—Normandie adopted a solutions-based approach that involved identifying the underlying business problem to make the right decisions using accurate and reliable passenger information. After the solution was implemented and deployed, Deauville—Normandie was able to monitor passenger data accurately and confidently. The Odyssey L-DCS and CUPPS platform were easy to install and set up, allowing Deauville—Normandie to seamlessly start collecting information.
Migrating from an existing DCS to the latest Embross Odyssey L-DCS presented an opportunity to upgrade to the latest information technologies and implement new automation strategies. The highly motivated operations/engineering and integration team worked superbly together to measure passenger control. Innovation, engineering excellence, and unsurpassed product quality were at the heart of this deployment.
Furthermore, by deploying Odyssey L-DCS, Deauville-Normandie more than achieved their initial goal of speeding up their level of support. They also realized an unexpected efficiency gain. Deauville-Normandie found that by using Embross’ Odyssey L-DCS, it provided them with a wide range of time saving features which allowed them to generate custom metrics, dashboards and reports through its own tools based on the Airport Authorities requirements.