Originally Posted by
Boraxo
Unfortunately the AMS agents scriutinized mine sufficient to determine that it was expired! I will address this experience in more detail in another thread, but would simply note here that I was eventually admitted with a valid US passport card. But this was done as a special exception after a call to the US embassy and completely at discretion of Dutch border control management.
The electronic/machine scan of the passport at AMS passport control would note that the passport is expired. I don’t know if that generates an automatic audit trail when an expired non-EU+ passport comes up there, but the national checks there cover more than the checks at most other airports I use to enter the Schengen area.
Between your recently expired US passport, a valid US passport card (which they likely had never handled before except perhaps when suspecting a fraudulent document use), and the pretty timely help of the consulate/embassy, the Dutch passport control probably felt it wasn’t worthwhile to have you stuck in a holding facility waiting for days on end for the consular representative to come around to get your details, come back with a replacement document and then only to see you get cleared in or sent back while messing up the family vacation. They could have done it, but they decided not to do so.