Meanwhile at a potential competitor (aka BRU): I have had some flights lately from BRU (avoiding AMS) and I have to say that either with priority or not, security never took more than 5-10 minutes. Also on busy times (e.g. Friday afternoon). The only bottleneck seems to be the passport control (for people not able to use the e-gates) in times of massive departures (e.g. morning waves).

Any estimate how long the regular line would have taken? Wondering if on a Saturday morning T3 is materially different to T2, where they sometimes also merge the Schengen departures.

My guess:

Check in max. 60 minutes. Security max. 40 minutes and passport control 15 to 25 minutes.

It looks like some other flights were about to start checking in as well, so it's possible that the lines are starting to get longer.

On this flight the doors closed on time with every seat taken.

While you *can* eat all the food you can find in Lounge 52, it isn’t recommended and you might be disappointed 😉

The good news, however, is that the lounge itself is a really nice space when it isn’t crowded, and you’re likely to get there just early enough to find a seat before passengers begin trickling in for the mid-morning/early afternoon wave of US departures.

My recommendation would be to go upstairs (if it’s open). It’s usually quieter and is officially the “Blue Bar”, but in addition to the premium drinks (which you’ll need to shell out for), they serve more or less the same selection of free drinks as the busier bar downstairs.

Okies, to try and avoid everything that is going on at AMS, I am glad that I was offered a reasonably priced upgrade to business class during check-in for my flight to Prague tomorrow on KLM, since I have no Privium or SkyPriority. Let's see how things go...

I even went with "bring a dummy suitcase that I won't be too sad about if it gets lost or destroyed."

And on a similar note, has anyone heard of similar operational difficulties at FRA recently?

I flew from CPH two days ago. From stepping off the train to clearing security took 5 minutes flat. Then not even two minutes to the lounge. That was a bit faster than usual, as there was nobody ahead of me at the CPH Express (i.e. priory) checkpoint. But even when there's a queue it's almost always short, and the wait is only a few minutes.

Johan

:D

The consensus here is that the Crown Lounge catering is pretty gross pretty much all the time, but most of the lounge patrons seem to like it, if the never ending buffet bun fights in the lounges are anything to go by. Or else they maybe feel compelled to eat and drink whatever is on offer because it is "for free".

Johan

The only (recent) time I recall eating anything in L25 is when I was really hungry, passed by it on my way to the D gates and it was almost 9pm. I scurried inside to make myself a quick sandwich which I could swallow down while walking to my gate to make it for KL1139.

If anything is worse than KL's catering in the lounges, it's KL's catering in EBC.

I went in a couple of times, the lockers are handy, but the food is dire. Lately I just pay for a restaurant meal somewhere. The space is gorgeous, but it is really no better than the Aspire lounges.

I registered for the forum specifically to contribute a data point as some of the posts on the forum helped me previously.

Today, 2nd Oct, our experience at AMS was: expedient.

1. Our Uber took 15min to cover 10km. We got off in front of Terminal 1 without traffic congestion at the terminal. This was 0615.
2. It took my partner (who checked in online and has no luggage to drop off), without priority, 10min to clear security at Departure 1 at 0625.
3. It took me, with priority, 20min to clear security at Departure 1 at 0745 (we are flying different airlines).
4. It would have taken only 5min to clear security at Departure 3 but I wanted to meet up with my partner at Departure because she's on an earlier flight.
5.. Everything is orderly. All AMS staff and lounge staff were polite and relaxed.

So not only a smooth experience, it was positively more expedient than many other airports I have been to.

Data point from today: I arrived with the train at 7.52am and was through security in 13 minutes (priority). It took me almost more time to enter the Schengen Aspire lounge than to get through security. Even the regular security lines looked reasonable and moved quite quickly, much better than last time when I was here end of August. If I had to guess, I would think that you would have been through in about half an hour (or even less).

Further to my earlier glowing report of expediency, there has been some problems following that.

Transiting from Departure 1 to Departure 3 requires going through passport control - which I knew about. But, the airport staff made several mistakes with their information, which cost me a lot of time:
1. There is NO priority line at Passport control for business class, only for diplomats and Privium. The airport staff that let me through to Departure 1 told me there was.
2. In the passport control area, there are two lines - one for (non-EU?) electronic passports and one for everyone else. But that's not obvious when you are at the end of the messy massive ball of a queue. The airport staff there told me there is just "one queue", so I moved into the quicker moving parts of that "one queue". This turned out to be incorrect.
3. There are two queues - electronic passports and all other passports. The all other passports queue move much quicker - so one naturally gravitate towards it. But, it's a much much longer queue. By the time you realise that, you've wasted a good 20-30min queuing and it would seem hard to abandon at that point. The electronic passport queue is overall shorter and I estimate moved at twice the pace if not more.
4. My non-electronic queue ended up taking 70 minutes today.
5. My airline (SQ323) signalled that we were boarding - and something 30min earlier at that. So I made my way from the Privium lounge (they gave out access to business class) (only the lounge, not the priority queue) to the gate - where I saw all passengers sitting down despite it has already been 30min of apparent boarding. The gate staff said "Yes we are boarding. But you are not getting on the plane yet" - which defies the common parlance of "boarding". So beware of this practice - not sure if it's an SQ effort to hasten boarding overall, or an AMS peculiarity. So now I am typing this at the gate instead of the Privium lounge where i hastily swallowed some bacon - and no, the Privium lounge is very nice, but doesn't compare to Silverkris in Singapore.

At this point: most definitely.

Depending on how busy it is at the 'standard' Priority checkpoint, I'd say yes!

Jinsterrrr :

First of all, welcome to flyertalk!

Second, thank you for taking the time to report your experience at Amsterdam Schiphol airport.

Third, to give a response to your observations:

- Schiphol airport has a lot of new staff, some also hired to cope with the chaos and are as such never properly informed about options for premium passengers as they need to steer mostly the general public flying economy

- At all passport control stations there has never been a priority line for First/Business Class passengers, only Privium/Diplomatic/Disabled/crew may skip the lines

- if you think the Amsterdam Privium lounge west can't compare to SKL Singapore than you have set the expectation bar too high:
- SKL Singapore is SQ's own business class lounge at its hub, operated by SQ themselves for eligable SQ-passengers +StarAlliance business class passengers
- Privium Lounge West is Amsterdam airport's own lounge normally for certain Privium members only,
it serves SQ as an outstation contract lounge, the standards/operations of which are outside SQ management control
be glad you weren't sent to the Aspire lounge : similair to the approach of deplore!

- the early boarding might be a relic leftover when passengers at the gate were informed about needing to mask up for flights to Singapore and ground staff needed to handout masks and politely reminded that while boarding the aircraft, Singaporean rules apply....
+ the fact passengers would be (fooled) to come early to the gate as not to rush last minute and be caught by airport queues / walking distance once airside ........ It is usually a 10 min+ from the location of the Privium Lounge west at Holland Boulevard through all the crowds to reach the G-gates.... especially for those less nimble and fast...

The SQ situation at Schiphol might also be similair at Changi airport with " Gate open"
meaning the gate is now managed by SQ ground staff
and as such any last minute needs can be attended to, before really boarding the aircraft

Anyways, glad you made it safely and didn't miss the flight.

Okies, datapoint:

Arrived at AMS off the train around 11:05. Headed to T1 around 11:30 to take a quick glance and the line of people for Schengen security stretched the gates all the way down the terminal, not sure if it went outside or not but here is a picture of the furthest I walked down:

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...64fea17070.jpg

Got into security at 12:10, and was through in 12 minutes thanks to Skypriority. I don't regret spending the extra money, the line for non-Skypriority must have been at least several hundred deep.

Am currently in the lounge and had lunch and will get some work done before my flight leaves. Food was... edible, nothing more. Carbs, vegetables, cheese, and the only meat items are cold cuts. Wine selections oftentimes drunk dry, slightly less so the sparkling. KLM 25 lounge about 70-80% full. I didn't know they had showers however...