EES process monitoring at Salzburg Airport with Isarsoft

Challenge: Implementation of EES

Since April 2026, the Entry/Exit System (EES) has been mandatorily operational across all air, land, and sea external borders of the Schengen area. The EES fundamentally digitizes border crossings: for all affected third-country nationals, digital and biometric registration is mandatory upon their first entry. The process requires scanning passports and fingerprints, as well as capturing a photograph of the traveler. Additionally, passengers must answer questions at the entry kiosk regarding the purpose of their trip, length of stay, accommodation details, provide information on financial means, and present a return or onward ticket. The entire process must be repeated fully every three years. Simply put: the system replaces the traditional, analog passport stamp with a central digital database and the collection of biometric data.

For airports, this represents a structural shift in passenger processing. After landing, travelers must now complete a two-step process consisting of initial registration at a self-service terminal, followed by a border control check with a border officer at the counter.

Impact of EES on operational processes

Particularly for regional airports like Salzburg Airport, the EES brings enormous operational and financial challenges. Because the new regulations apply exclusively to third-country nationals, EU and non-EU citizens must go through separate checkpoints. This leads to a fragmentation of passenger flows and exacerbates existing bottlenecks:

• Lack of space in terminals:
  Small airports like Salzburg Airport often have very tightly dimensioned check-in and passport control areas. Setting up the new self-service kiosks requires space that is simply barely available.
• The "clumping effect":
  At regional airports, passengers frequently arrive in concentrated waves, e.g. , a fully booked flight from London. If the processing time per person increases from approximately 30 seconds to several minutes for a large portion of passengers, back-ups rapidly build up onto the apron or into the corridors.
• High investment costs:
  Acquiring the hardware and making the necessary adjustments to the IT infrastructure tie up substantial financial resources. For smaller airports, this represents a noticeable budgetary strain.
• Personnel costs:
  Although the kiosks are "self-service," experience shows that passengers require significant assistance during initial registration. Small airports must therefore often assign their own ground staff to help passengers with the scanning process, taking the burden off federal police officers at the counters.
• Flight schedule delays:
  When processing times per passenger drag out due to technical glitches, language barriers, or system outages, flight schedules are immediately delayed. If border processing times become too long, airlines risk missing their allocated slots at destination airports.

The "winter peak" at Salzburg Airport

At Salzburg Airport, these EES challenges are heightened by pronounced seasonality. During the winter months, the airport transforms into a central hub for international ski tourism. To handle the massive influx of non-EU passengers - particularly from the UK - the airport opens Amadeus Terminal 2 every winter as an additional handling area.

In this peak scenario, which is already stretched to its limit in terms of time and capacity, strict EES mandates meet extremely constrained space conditions, an operational challenge that is nearly impossible to manage without intelligent, data-driven control.

The solution: Process monitoring with Isarsoft Perception

To make complex EES processes efficient and manage the surge of passengers during the winter season, Alexander Münch, IT Manager at Salzburg Airport, sought a reliable and automated solution. Following intensive market research and unsatisfactory tests of other systems, Isarsoft approached the airport and impressed them with the software's performance and execution speed.

Starting in the very first 2025/2026 winter season, the AI-driven video analytics platform delivered outstanding results. The software precisely tracks passenger counts, beginning from the moment they step off the transfer bus through to the post-immigration check. Queue dwell times were captured, categorized by EU and non-EU status, and automatically linked to the correct flight number. In this way, Isarsoft enables the airport to practice data-based capacity management, sustainably shortening wait times and deploying resources like ground staff proactively and purposefully.

Technological innovation: Privacy-compliant Re-Identification (Re-ID)

The foundation for these high-precision analytics is the deployment of state-of-the-art Re-ID (Re-Identification) technology. This method allows continuous, error-free tracking of passenger flows across multiple distinct camera streams. The system recognizes individuals based purely on visual features, such as clothing color combinations, in full compliance with privacy laws without recording personal or biometric features that could reveal identities.

The flexible and seamless integration of Isarsoft Perception highlights Salzburg Airport's forward-looking direction. It ensures that compliance with EES guidelines does not come at the expense of the passenger experience, but rather sustainably strengthens the airport's operational resilience.

Implementation

The implementation of Isarsoft Perception targets four critical core points of the arrival and immigration process to guarantee a seamless and data-backed passenger flow:

Continuous project optimization and fine-tuning

Over the course of the project, the Isarsoft team continuously optimized the system setup in close coordination with Salzburg Airport. The goal was to maximize recognition rates and allocation precision (matching passengers to flights and EU status).

Optimization efforts focused on two core areas:

1. Enhancing flight number recognition and counting accuracy at buses

• Flight schedule reconciliation:
  Automated flight number recognition at buses was validated using intelligent cross-referencing with the airport's real-time flight schedule.
• Capture timing optimization:
  The ideal moment for image and data capture was technically refined to minimize motion blur.
• Counting line fine-tuning:
  Based on precise analysis of actual bus stopping positions, virtual counting lines in the camera feed were exactingly adjusted.
• Exception management (Edge Cases):
  Logical routines were implemented system-side to flawlessly handle edge cases, such as buses with missing or erroneous flight number displays.

2. Optimizing Re-Identification

• Camera expansion:
  An additional camera was strategically added to the existing camera setup to optimize differentiation between EU and non-EU citizens.
• Minimizing occlusion effects:
  Isarsoft analyzed dense passenger flows ("occlusions") to train the software to correctly re-identify individuals even when briefly obscured by other travelers.
• Angle-independent feature extraction:
  AI-supported, anonymous feature extraction was refined to deliver high precision even from non-frontal, oblique camera angles.

Results

With the successful implementation of Isarsoft Perception, Salzburg Airport has established a seamless, reliable database for process times across the entire immigration area. Based on these real-time insights, airport management is now equipped to make well-founded operational decisions:

• Forecasting in staffing:
  Expected wait times enable data-driven deployment of security and ground personnel.
• Optimized passenger flow management:
  Bottlenecks and overcrowding in the Amadeus Terminal can be detected early and managed proactively.
• Increased passenger satisfaction:
  Reducing bottlenecks noticeably shortens wait times for travelers.
• Strategic route analysis:
  Automatically mapping EU- and non-EU-heavy passenger flows to specific flight routes provides valuable insights for long-term capacity planning.
• Seamless compliance:
  Strict European Entry/Exit System (EES) guidelines are accurately met in an audit-proof manner through fully automated processes.

IT Manager Alexander Münch was primarily responsible for the strategic procurement and successful operational rollout of Isarsoft Perception at Salzburg Airport.

He draws a thoroughly positive conclusion regarding the project's success:

"The anonymized capture of passenger wait times in the EES process via Isarsoft allows us at Salzburg Airport to measure processing durations in detail and understand them deeply. We specifically use the gained Re-ID data for in-depth analysis and continuous optimization of all operations in the arrival area."
Alexander Münch, Head of IT

Alexander Münch also particularly emphasizes the agility of the partnership: The extraordinary speed and flexibility with which the Isarsoft team approached the project set new benchmarks. In a record time of just four weeks, the system was already delivering business-critical results.

How airports worldwide benefit from video analytics with EES

The successful implementation at Salzburg Airport serves as a prime example of how innovative video analytics software turns the operational challenges of the Entry/Exit System into measurable advantages. The core benefits of Isarsoft Perception can be summarized as follows:

• Maximum cost efficiency via existing infrastructure:
  The software integrates directly onto the airport’s existing camera infrastructure. This drastically minimizes capital expenditures and guarantees an extremely fast time-to-market. A decisive advantage confirmed by Head of IT Alexander Münch:

"Evaluation takes place based on anonymized data and uses our existing camera infrastructure, which kept implementation effort low." Alexander Münch, Head of IT

• Automation instead of manual effort:
  Error-prone and labor-intensive manual measurements or spot checks, e.g. clipboard observations, are replaced by seamless, fully automated, and permanent process monitoring.
• Advanced real-time analytics:
  Management receives precise, data-driven analysis of passenger flows and dwell times in real time. These KPIs allow direct responses to operational bottlenecks and support informed, long-term capacity decisions.
• 100% GDPR-compliant passenger tracking:
  Thanks to cutting-edge Re-ID technology, passenger flows are accurately analyzed across different terminals without storing biometric or personal data. Privacy remains fully safeguarded at all times.

Technology comparison: Video analytics vs. sensor-based solutions

A direct technology comparison using the Salzburg Airport project illustrates the significant advantages of AI-based video analytics over traditional hardware sensors.

While video analytics flexibly taps into existing security camera infrastructure, sensor-based approaches generally demand purchasing new hardware, undergoing complex installation processes, and running additional wiring. Furthermore, sensors frequently hit functional limits during complex, multi-step processes like the EES, necessitating the parallel deployment of isolated third-party software systems.

The head-to-head comparison at Salzburg Airport, based on an estimate of approximately 16 sensors required for full facility coverage, breaks down as follows:

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Future developments at Salzburg Airport

Looking to the coming years, Salzburg Airport is embarking on the largest infrastructure modernization in its recent history. After handling roughly 1.8 million passengers in 2025, the airport's entire terminal landscape is now being fundamentally redesigned. The historical main terminal and Amadeus Terminal 2 will be merged technically, architecturally, and structurally into a single continuous complex. Planning is already underway at full speed, with official construction set to begin in early 2027.

Deputy Governor Stefan Schnöll underscores the necessity of efficient infrastructure, which serves as a lifeline for both the economy and tourism. The redevelopment is essential, as the aging building structure can barely accommodate new legal mandates like the Entry/Exit System (EES) due to massive space and technical requirements. The airport proved its readiness for this capacity expansion during the successful launch of the 2025/26 winter season, which ran smoothly despite the massive rush of ski tourists thanks to the deployment of Isarsoft Perception. For the future expanded terminal complex, technological innovations are firmly embedded as a digital core pillar to ensure long-term efficiency and future readiness.

More about Salzburg Airport

Salzburg Airport stands as a modern regional airport that creates jobs and plays an increasingly major role as a powerful investor for the economy and tourism.

Contact: Salzburg Airport

More about Isarsoft

Based in Munich, Isarsoft has been building its reputation as a reliable partner in video analytics since 2019. Its mission: to unlock the potential of existing security camera systems using artificial intelligence.

Known for reliability, flexibility, user-friendliness, and versatile integration capabilities, Isarsoft helps organizations optimize operational workflows, increase safety, and boost customer satisfaction. Starting with people counting, its portfolio now encompasses over 10 use cases, including queue management, object recognition, path analysis, demographics, and more. For Isarsoft, every camera counts—in retail, airports, public transit, urban planning, logistics, and cultural institutions.

Contact: Isarsoft

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