Originally Posted by tev9999
Are you sure? I did the opposite this morning. Arrived in AMS from DTW in the E gates and had a connection at D71. I had to go through passport control - only took about 15 seconds as the airport was very slow at 6am. Had two hours, but could have done it in 20 minutes (note I was first off the plane, so this could skew things if you are in 41J).
My connection is now 26 hours thanks to snow in MUC.
Some of them D gates are in the non Schengen zone, some of them are in the Schengen zone. I flew TYS-DTW-AMS-VIE on 2/22. I went to D78 gate and needed to go to Schengen zone. If I was flying to PRG I'd stay in non Schengen zone and ent to some of them D gates too.
If I remember correctly D52 and up gates are in the Schengen zone and they are located on the 2nd floor of D. Then D51 and below gates are in the non Schengen zone and are located on the 1st floor.
Regarding passport control line. You are right. Most of the time is very fast, like 3 maybe 5 people making the line. However, I had one misconnect (out of 13 times going via AMS on my TYS-VIE trips) last year due to a long line at the passport control . It took me close 35 minutes to go via passport control. Add to the that DTW fligh was about 15 minutes late on arrival to AMS and I missed my VIE flight and had to wait for 6 hours for the next one.