Amsterdam airport in crisis

I connected through Schiphol a few weeks go and it was fine. It seems to be security lines that are the biggest problem. I wasn’t sure what to expect after reading all the articles about how bad it was. The passport line was about 200 people long I would guess, but it took less than 20 minutes because they had about 12 agents working and they barely looked at my passport.

a1 Okay, this is unfortunate.
a2 I finally found a flight to Budapest that is somewhat near budget, but its KLM through Amsterdam (late July with 4 hour layovers each way).
a3 Do i feel lucky, well do I punk; and gamble on things being better in the middle of the high season?
a4 Or do I cough up another $300 to fly through Frankfurt (same departure airport) or through Istanbul (which will require a 3.5 hour drive to Houston and about $150 in parking fees)
a5 If its not one thing its another ......
a6 I figure I have about 4 days to decide.

Connected through AMS today (Vienna --> AMS --> ATL). Zero impact on transfers other than last ATL-bound flight of the day leaving 30 minutes late to catch a few more stragglers originating at AMS and coming through security. Other ATL flights were on time, I believe. One of my least chaotic trips through immigration at AMS in quite some time (first time through AMS since pre-pandemic times).

Glad to hear it went smoothly, Dave. The more I read, the more it seems that the people most impacted are those departing from AMS.

Some things to consider, as we all plan for our travels during a pandemic (which is not over) and with worldwide labor shortages, pilot strikes, mass flight cancellations, supply chain issues, and all sorts of other disruptions to what we so recently called "business as usual"...

1. The high profile meltdowns we are seeing/reading about at Schiphol are not unique to that airport. Similar (if less spectacular) meltdowns have been occurring at others. It's not just a problem in there, so if you think you're going to avoid all the mess by steering clear of AMS, you may not avoid it entirely.

2. We have not even yet hit the peak, busy summer travel season yet. Maybe things will get better by summer, but it's just as likely (maybe more likely) that with the huge spike in air travel that's expected in the coming weeks, it may get a lot more worse and more widespread. Calibrate your plans -- and your expectations -- accordingly.

(Personally, I think I'll stick to domestic road trips this summer, my next international flights aren't scheduled until the Fall.)

My Delta flight to Stockholm connected through AMS with no hitches. Our flight home in reverse, connects through AMS. Fingers crossed we make it through.

I have a coworker who's Mom and travel partner came through Amsterdam last weekend. She and her travel partner are both in their 80's and we're feeling overwhelmed and unsure what to do next. After a considerable amount of frustration that included calling her son-my coworker for help, she spied a set of doors with a 'do not enter' warning sign. She promptly went through it as alarms went off and warnings to go no further. She stood still until security came. She played the old and confused card and airport staff gave them a personal escort through ticketing and security to their gate.😅

That’s genius, Allan.

b1 I was reminded by my daughter that AMS looked like that picture when we went through about 8 years ago.
b2 Which caused me to look at the picture more closely to discover that the photo is at leat 2 5 years old (not a single mask on anyone).
b3 I checked out that web site posted above and didn't really matter what date I picked the answer was the same 70% of the time "crowded".
b4 I wish I could afford my regular flight through IST, so much easier.

I transferred through Schiphol on the 23rd, on my way home from a weekend trip to England.

It is not true that this is not impacting transfers: There is a high number of delayed and cancelled flights out of Amsterdam, which impacts the whole KLM system. My flight from England arrived in Amsterdam almost three hours late at the end of the day, which meant that I and many others on the flight had missed the last connections to our destinations of the day.

When we got off the airplane, we found at terminal full of passengers with absolutely no KLM staff to assist with rebooking, or any support for finding accommodations. I am not exaggerating -- I used the video screens they have in Schiphol to call the service centre they have, and was told that there were no customer service employees in the airport after 10pm.

Because the 23rd was a day of particularly severe problems, and because our flight arrived late in the day, my fellow passengers and I were competing with many thousands of others for the remaining hotel rooms. All the airport hotels were fully booked, as was every other hotel that I could find within an easily reachable distance at almost midnight. I stayed in touch with another passenger who finally found a room in a non-airport hotel some distance away, where they took no online bookings and where the clerk on duty did not speak English (shocking in Amsterdam): this apparently kept it from filling up. Nevertheless, this person reported arriving to this hotel at 23.30 to find a line of at least 30 other people from the airport. I personally decided to just sleep in the airport to avoid the chance of getting stuck in check-in lines the next day.

The next morning, I was very lucky that my flight was not cancelled: In the part of the terminal where I slept, two of the first five flights in the morning were.

If your connection works well, then everything is fine. If anything goes wrong, and particularly if it goes wrong on a day when things are melting down there, then you are on your own. In any event, anything serious enough to force an airline to temporarily suspend ticket sales deserves concern.

Wow -- Azra -- what a horrible experience. Very eye-opening. I am so sorry.

And that article you linked about their suspending ticket sales underlines even further the point you are making.

I found the staff at AMS to be very quick and efficient last time I was through there in pre-pandemic times. I suspect that AMS is not the only airport dealing with staffing shortages at the security checkpoints, and this problem may worsen as the summer travel season ramps up. We've been having similar problems lately, especially in Toronto and Vancouver. Improvements in pay and benefits may entice more people to work for the private security agencies, and of course those costs will be passed on to travellers.

Kim, yes: It was genuinely a shock. The earlier problems had also been reported in German media, so I knew that there were issues there, but the scale of it was astonishing and unlike anything I have experienced in a major hub airport anywhere before.

I was talking to a woman at the coffee shop the next morning who basically said that that night had seemed like it was particularly bad, but that there was a dull roar of problems all the time there.

It felt all quite dystopian, to be honest.

Azra,

Your experience was quite different to mine. I kept an eye on the departure board. Around 1 pm, there were a lot of 30-minute delays, but I never saw delays much longer than that.

I did have a first on this trip. After pushing back at Vienna, we had to return to the gate to offload a belligerent passenger. I was a little surprised she made it on the plane. She was repeatedly shouting, "F*** you, Austria" into her mobile phone in the boarding area and following each curse with a perceived slight the country had done to here -- not allowing her to smoke, not allowing her to drink, etc. At one point, she shouted "Austria, I won't be back!" into the phone. Well... that didn't hold true.

Dave, I would not be surprised if the delays stack up over the course of the course of the day. The flight I was on was delayed leaving Schiphol to the UK in the middle of the day, arrived almost two hours late at the airport I was leaving from, and then was even more delayed on the leg I was on, returning to Schiphol. Anyway, according to this news story, there were 450 delayed flights and 75 cancelled ones on the 23rd, so my experience was not unique on that day. I think it was, like the woman at the coffee place told me, just a particularly bad day...but not the only one in recent weeks.

Like I said, if you make your connection, then all is fine. But if something goes wrong, be prepared for problems.

Also, what a weird story with the passenger!

I departed from AMS on May 1st and it was a nightmare. Thankfully we arrived there over 4 hours early. Getting through the line at the United counter and then through security took over 3 hours. Security was the worst. They are understaffed everywhere. Our flight was delayed by 50 minutes because they had to locate ground crew. We barely made our connecting flight at SFO, and it was only possible because we had global entry. We ran for the gate and arrived after they started boarding.

I wonder if a person could...or should...book a cheap nearby hotel room, just in case they don't make their transfer to their next flight out of AMS?
Book in advance, be ahead of the game.
I'm too old to be sleeping in airports.
Did it once years ago...no more.

I'm thinking of my KLM flights in and out of there in September; though I'm hoping things will have improved by then.

I'm thinking of my KLM flights in and out of there in September; though I'm hoping things will have improved by then.

I'm booked with Delta in and out of AMS in Sept and watching this closely.

I follow a lady in Dublin on Twitter, and her feed a couple of days back is full of descriptions of complete chaos.

I have a friend who is in Europe right now. She was supposed to fly home out of Amsterdam. She called Delta and is now flying home out of London but of course they have to pay to get themselves to London by train

She’s visiting family in the Netherlands and the family was the one who really pushed her to rebook

Also flight delays aren’t telling the whole story. I’ve seen pictures posted online of flights out of Amsterdam that are basically empty. The airlines are taking off without their passengers and know it but they have slots for takeoff and landing and they just can’t keep holding waiting on people to get through security. Probably a last decision made by an earlier poster to sleep overnight in the airport.