Lawrious

Seems to be a common theme across Europe as airports get back intonfull swing, minus appropriate staffing numbers. The UK has been experiencing crap like this since the Easter holiday season. Heathrow, Manchester, you name it, it's been a nightmare.

malmostoso

Oh, "commercial" refers to the "commerce" of the shopping mall that Schiphol runs, which also happens to have a large parking lot for aircraft.

Annoyingly, shoppers seem to be lured away from spending money by continuously boarding said aircrafts, but that's where the genius moves of the last few days come in...

flyerkit

Total chaos. People held out of the arrivals Hall for about 30mins in pens. After access to passport area, huge queues. Most egates out of operation. Sloth like speed from officials...
Hmmm...

Access to arrivals blocked.

Crowds in shopping area waiting 4 escape.

Border processing .

AnaTFN

I keep going back to the same question: Did you see if the Privium line was still active?

So far the worst was for those landside prior to security but the transfer situation looks terrible as well...

johan rebel

Privium has assured me in writing that all Privium gates are working. I suspect the real challenge lies in getting to one. When there are "normal" queues it is always possible to squeeze past, which I don't hesitate to do even though I find it slightly embarrassing. But when you have to run a Tensa barrier labyrinth gauntlet . . . .

Just like you I eagerly await reports from those unfortunates who have not choice but giving it a go. I have a bunch of tickets that all say AMS, and no realistic alternatives. Fortunately not just yet, but the countdown has started.

Johan

AnaTFN

Same, I am traveling in and out AMS four weeks of the next five (not connecting through, I visit a company in the NL) and not looking forward to it...

MareLuce

Sounds reasonable, though the people who I asked "Why are you in this line?" replied it was for baggage pickup.
So maybe that was just what they were told but the truth was it was for passport control.

That line I saw was easily a 2 hour line.

Schiphol inside and out could have been a filming location for Fear The Walking Dead Season 7...

MareLuce

(Duplicate)

FlyingBlonde89

Really keen to know what the bigger picture is right now with Privium (I don't know that it'll be worth it if this chaos continues)...

Mr FlyingBlonde was at Schiphol on Friday 22 April (so not the worst day) and said that there were a lot of Privium members stressed because they couldn't bypass the queues. He reported that he queued for 2 hours in the regular lines and Privium members were able to reach the Privium gates but were still faced with a 30minute backlog. (Mr FB reported lots of yelling 'I have Privium' and staff shrugging in response.) So whether they sorted out Privium access or not I don't know but on that day it was a matter of 30mins queue v 2hour queue.

Great_circle

Why is it that those e-gates are inoperative so frequently in AMS?

Xandrios

Because they require specialised staff. While the gates (the mechanical part) is automated, there still is a human controlling which gates open and which ones require manual processing.

I'm scheduled to fly next Saturday at noon, which (according to the predictions) is going to be a Peak Day similar to yesterday. Since also pick-up at my destination will be tricky (especially if the flight is delayed, which seems likely) I'm actually looking at postponing and changing plans to fly at another day/time. Not sure if I'll be able though as this is personal travel and last-minutes fares are crazy high.

Edit: Changed from A3 on saturday noon to KL sunday early morning. According to the prediction that should be a better time. And should be able to legally use Skypriority check in/security that way.

sehgalanuj

I've been looking at this post with interest and shock since I have a couple of connections coming up at AMS. My outbound via AMS will be a Schengen to Non-Schengen connection, so only passport control to pass. But coming back is a Non-Schengen to Schengen (considered non-clean) so I will have to pass security as well. I do have Privium but reading some of the posts makes me think this may not help much. I'll be flying 11 May and 24 May. Does anyone know if the Dutch holidays are over by this point and we should expect a bit of normalcy? Or should I start planning on moving my flights off to Air France?

malmostoso

Assuming you mean May, the holidays will end on May 8th, so hopefully it'll be better.

sehgalanuj

You're right. I did mean May.

Also, thank you. This is good to know. My outbound was actually May 14th (I completely forgot), and since there is the climate action, just to be safe I switched this leg over to AF. If there is still chaos on the return, I guess I'll either end up switching to AF or using the Schiphol VIP service, whichever works out as a better value.

flyerkit

Privium was active but entry is on the first floor. It will take about 45mins to get to the top of the stairs.