I am just beginning to look for flights to Barcelona and am trying to keep flight costs down for my daughter. The reasonable flight we are looking at from San Francisco has a layover in Amsterdam for 1 1/2 hours. Our luggage will be checked through to Barcelona. Is this enough time to get through passport control? If I remember correctly, we won't have to retrieve the bags until Barcelona. I haven't flown through Amsterdam for quite a few years, but remember them being quite organized at that time and things went very quickly.
Posted by
Medford, OR, USA
5837 posts
AMS has been one of the more efficient European hubs for immigration control and transfers. Generally 90 minutes is comfortable for passport control and transfer. However, AMS has a new security arrangement since I've connected at AMS. The new arrangement is suppose to be an improvement: https://insideflyer.nl/schiphol-central-security/
If you are flying Delta/KLM/AF, KLM's minimum "legal" connect is 50 minutes at AMS. If you miss the connection KLM will deal with getting you on another flight. As long as your flight to Barcelona isn't the last flight of the day, 90 minutes if fine. But everyone has a different comfort level.
Posted by
San Francisco Bay Area
5697 posts
Saw something for LEVEL airlines SFO-Barcelona for $199 -- but I know nothing else about it.
Your connecting flights are both on the same ticket, right? If yes, the airline has to get you to your final destination. If no ... then you might have to worry. We had a connection about that long coming back from Venice and we had to hustle -- got to the gate and they were already boarding. But, as you said, very organized.
Posted by
OP
9 posts
Thanks for the responses. I am looking at buying our tickets through Delta, so we will be traveling Delta/KLM all the way. I have been through AMS several times before, and was always amazed at how efficiently they handled transfers. But it has been a few years since I have been through Schiphol, so I wanted to just check with others to see what their more recent experiences were. I read the article on the new central security at Schiphol--hope all of the kinks are worked out before we fly through. Keeping our fingers crossed....