Xandrios

I flew in from LatAm yesterday afternoon, so this was one of the 'unsecure' countries. What a mess.



We started queuing at the top of the stairs. Some people took the escalator down and were unable to exit safely due to the people queuing right at the end. Lots of pushing and shoving. About 15 minutes wait to even reach the hall/overflow area, and 15 more to reach the point where the EU/Non-EU passport holders are separated. Out of the 9 booths only 4 were open. Out of these 4 only one for EU passports.

@Schiphol blamed it, of course, on the Dutch border police.

mfkne

Gotta keep Privium attractive somehow.

KLflyerRalph

I still find it ridiculous AMS does not offer any kind of (Skypriority) fast track on arrivals. Schiphol may be a convenient airport to transfer at, for departing and arriving PAX they are becoming a PITA.

Xandrios

Ha! You'd first be stuck 30 minutes in line before being able to break away and use privium. Unless you would be willing to seriously elbow your way through..

Agreed. Although Skypriority would not solve the problem, it would just make it slightly more bearable for elites. The only real solution would be for Schiphol to get their sh** together, so that there basically is no need for Skypriority. Then I would not mind to wait in line for 10 minutes with everyone else..

Maybe I am mistaken but before the new layout came into play I do not remember this to have been such an issue. I was always able to get through in minutes upon arrival. Actually I flew in on exactly the same flight about one year ago - and the experience was fine. Maybe I was just unlucky this time, but it was quite a mess indeed.

mfkne

The difference is that before you could choose from two or three checkpoints to enter the country. Now there's only one depending on whether you're coming from a safe country or not I think - is that right?

KLflyerRalph

Good question. Although the security checkpoints are more centralized, are there now more checkpoints for arrival immigration?

Ber2dca

Queue separation, efficient staff use is a bit of an issue.

When I recently went through the passport/immigration check to get from the 'non-Schengen' area to the Schengen area, there were 4 counters open, 2 for "all passports" and 2 for "EU passports". There was an extremely long line for the "all passport" counters and the EU passport counters were virtually empty.

But the people queuing up for the non-EU counters made it difficult for EU passport holders to get through to the EU counters quickly and without having to shove their way past people.

The situation could have been solved quickly if they had closed one EU passport counter and replaced it with an additional 'all passports' one and then had Schiphol staff (who were in the area but doing nothing) instruct people where to queue properly.

mfkne

Why don't they use tensabarriers at all?

Ber2dca

They did but it was poorly set up, they seemed to have them set up in such a way that they planned for a separation of EU and non-EU way later than necessary i.e. they entirely underestimated the potential length of the non-EU queue.

Zembla

Tip: When the queues are like this at non-schengen-schengen you can detour landside if you have the right passport/visa to do so. If the landside queue is long, you'll still have another checkpoint to choose from.

wsmw

Just a quick question, I am traveling from the UK with a transit at AMS. Would I still need to go through this screening? Also, my transit time is 2.5 hours. will it be sufficient? the queues seems very long.

mfkne

Depends on where you're travelling to from AMS.

Grouchy

Stuck like 3-4 minutes working my way through Privium when arriving from China.
Only had to say excuse me 12-14 times

wsmw

Sorry forgot to include that. it will a a flight from EDI to KUL via AMS.

AJCNL

Good grief, 2.5 hours will be plenty of time, all you need to do is step off the flight from EDI and walk to the gate for the flight to KUL, no formalities or queuing on the way (Unless you don't already have the second boarding pass in which case stop at a KLM transfer machine to pick it up). You will find the Departures 2 area of the terminal is a building site at the moment, huge renovation works in progress, just walk on along to Departures 3, between the F and G piers, no building works there though it is busier than usual because of the mess in Departures 2.