Risks in Flights from US to Schiphol/Amsterdam in Winter / Christmas?

What is Schifold?

I fly out of O'Hare airport in Chicago one of the world's busiest airports and coldest snowiest major cities. I spent the Xmas/New Year holiday week in Paris 2014, 2015, 2016, Amsterdam 2017, Madrid 2018 and again in France 2019. Never have I experienced a flight delay or cancellation going or coming back related to weather.

Wow, that is awesome news - I'm much relieved to hear that (-:
thank you for your prompt response - we are probably going to Paris for Christmas then down to Barcelona and Madrid finally for New Years eve.

The winter is milder over there that time of year than in Chicago. They don't have blizzards like we experience here in Chicago. I never have seen snow accumulation in the places you are going. We had 70 degrees in Cadiz, Spain on New Year's day 2019 and spent the day sitting at the beach drinking a rioja. It was in the upper 50's in Barcelona January 2020.

One of our delays some years back was fog at CDG on December 23. Our flight to London Heathrow was initially delayed because of the fog and then it was further delayed because our flight lost its landing slot at Heathrow and had to be ‘fitted in’. We just made our connection but our luggage didn’t. British Airways delivered it to us Christmas Day morning:). Winter storms in North America certainly disrupt air travel so you have to be prepared for the possibility. On your way there, try to minimize connections on the North American side to reduce the risk of missing one. On your way home delays may not be as much of an issue as you are ending your travel.

We have done the Christmas markets a couple of times. At that time of year weather is always a risk BUT most, nearly all days are clear. We have encountered snow and ice and you need to be flexible. Never hit a flight schedule but did affect a couple of trains. You cannot predict it so plan to be flexible. I don't think you need to be overly concerned because you cannot control it. Always have a hint of plan B in the back of your mind.

I would be more concerned about disruptions due to the weather at any connecting airport unless you are able to fly nonstop to Europe.

For example, Chicago O'Hare is used to winter weather and snow/ice. It's a different story with an airport like DFW. If they get ice, they shut down.

I would second any recommendation above to fly DIRECT to AMS or CDG. Your best bets for not getting "stuck", delayed, and/or losing luggage will be to go with a direct flight. Not everyone has that luxury, but if you have it, I'd exclusively use a direct flight even with a bit of price premium.

But like folks mention, AMS should have less "winter" - ie snow and ice - than you would expect from its latitude. Weather expectations would be things like cold, windy, maybe rainy, and definitely shorter days and grayer day. But in a bigger European city like Amsterdam or Paris, also quite festive to balance out the winter blues.

If there is a huge storm in the U.S., it often doesn’t matter where you are. The domino effect of planes not being positioned can mess anything up. However, you can’t predict this. For what it is worth, I have flown to/from Europe 3 times in the winter (6 flights, 4 with connections). One flight was canceled, but I got on a later flight connecting in a different city. When my flight was canceled, I got rebooked, but stuck in the middle seat in a row of 5. Still, I was glad to get to my destination. I think the bigger issue in December are the crowded flights and higher flight prices.

Build some flexibility into your schedule so that if your flight got shifted by a day or two it would not ruin your trip.

One of our delays some years back was fog at CDG on December 23.

I had a fog delay out of CDG on Dec 28 last year. An hour or two, I don't remember exactly. And, similar to Claire's experience above, since we didn’t get into Atlanta at our planned time, we had to sit on the runway there for a hour before being able to go to a gate. So we were two or three hours late arriving in Atlanta from the fog delay at CDG.

For example, Chicago O'Hare is used to winter weather and snow/ice.
It's a different story with an airport like DFW. If they get ice, they
shut down.

Where in the US are you flying from? This is where I'd be more concerned. Using Chicago as an example, there was a period of about 8 years that I had to travel there for business every February, and 3 of those flights home were cancelled due to bad weather in Chicago. Two years ago me and a coworker were flying home on a Wednesday afternoon, I got home Friday and he was stuck until Sunday. I've spent many unplanned days in Chicago over the years.

We had tickets on KLM to fly SFO to Athens via Amsterdam, on our way to Africa in mid November. The day before our departure, I received an email from KLM telling me that our flight SFO to AMS was canceled (apparently because of aircraft availability), and was rescheduled to fly the next day via Detroit on Delta. That would have completely messed up our plans in Africa, since our trip was only 8 days long. I called KLM right away and insisted that they put us on another flight to Athens, so we got the last 3 seats on Lufthansa to Athens via Frankfurt. I will never fly Lufthansa again, but that's another story.