Haha. After the horrible inflation of last year this doesn't even buy you a French fries with croquette at a railway station outlet. Let alone Schiphol with prices 30% higher than that.

KL has immense staff shortages on the ground.This situation is far worse than most people realise.

In Holland we like to play the blame game. KL blames the wind and runway maintenance but the reality is that they lack staff to refuel the planes and load the suitcases.
The situation at KL is even worse than at security,they are hundreds of bagageloaders short When possible avoid AMS the coming months.

Any reference for that, Netherlines? I'd say the pics of people queuing way outside the airport today, the limited number of screening lanes open, and the analysis of the problems with the runway system with NE winds and Aalsmeer out is convincing enough these are the main problems. I flew back and forth to Colombia between 10-31 May, and on my travel dates there was not any problem, not any signal KLM was vastly understaffed and had to cut flights for that reason alone.

Last month's wildcat strike was because KLM announced they would employ a handling company to help them deal with luggage loading problems. Those problems were caused by KLM staff shortages. So yes, it's not only Schiphol that has staff issues.

KLM also doesn't have enough air crew. They want to wet lease aircraft for KLC, and then still don't expect to have sufficient crew in June and July for the planned schedule. Read all about it here.

Johan

And now they are predicting thunderstorms with heavy rain and a risk of flooding for tomorrow, Sunday.

Not exactly what Schiphol needs.

Johan

May be I'll have to be in Stockholm week after next. If it was Malmo, I'd be seriously considering driving. Might still drive to BRU or DUS to catch SK.

For transfer pax, fair enough.

If I was tonight in BCN (or somewhere else) and instead of a delayed flight as last Monday (though weekend flights were actually cancelled...) I would be told that the airplane will depart empty, I'd have been very angry. The whole point was I was trying to get to my own bed.

easyJet have their own pier, unfortunately the entrance to non-Schengen area of this pier is from the general non-Schengen terminal. Schengen pier of easyJet, empty as it is, has its own security checkpoint. I imagine life is much better there than in Departures 1&2 checkpoints.

If you are in London, consider flying from RTM to LCY as well. BA.

I saw the in-app food voucher back in April. In my case, I'd been rebooked on SK, and so the app said both that my boarding pass would be my voucher and that it couldn't issue me a boarding pass. The SK pass said nothing about a voucher or the amount, and I didn't want to find out A) whether it worked, B) how generous the Dutch could be, and C) whether anything for sale airside was edible.

According to a luchtvaartnieuws.nl article a Dutch OTA reports a 30% drop in bookings for AMS departures this summer, with Dutch clients opting for Düsseldorf, Köln, Weeze, Eindhoven and Rotterdam instead. Brussels gets no mention, but I figure it stands to benefit too.

I guess this is good news for those of us who have no reasonable alternatives. The fewer pax at AMS, the better.

Johan

Today's departure board show's 28 KL flights canceled so far, all but one after 12 noon.

Johan

AMS app shows 1141 Oslo (7am), 1413 Lyon (8.40am), 1779 Hamburg (10.30am) and 1565 Genoa (11.40am) as cancelled.

also cancelled: 12.00 BGO, 12.30 BER, 13.35 HAM, 14.20 CPH, 16.00 DUB CDG and BSL, 16.20 NCL AAL and PRG, 16.25 MAN KRS STR and NUE, 16.35 FCO, 16.40 LUX, 16.45 BCN and HAM, 16.55 NCE MAD BRU and BER, 17.15 LCY, 20.35 BRE FRA and BEG, 20.45 HAM, 21.00 HAJ, 21.10 BOD, 21.15 LUX and NWI, 21.20 LYS, 21.30 BRU

so it seems the majority is cancelled between 16.00 and 17.00 and after 20.00

Never seen AMS like tonight, people sleeping in nearly every corner. Looks like downtown LA or Tenderloin in SF. You'd expect some disaster to have struck, but to me, it is down to incompetence in forecasting and planning.

Same for luggage area, 3 belts taken with stacked suitcases from passengers where their suitcase did not make the connection, good luck getting those back.

Was on an inbound AMS EU flight today that got cancelled, some people got rebooked for Tuesday (!) with no earlier flights available. Hate to say it but avoid KLM and Schiphol for the time being, next 3 months book elsewhere if you can.

I made this exact same trip on the Pinksteren/Whit weekend, I think 4, maybe 5 years ago, and my flight was cancelled - due to “wind”. My replacement flight 3 hours later was also cancelled for the same reason. The vast majority of flights were able to operate, so I found it really strange that they would cancel 2 successive flights to the same destination when almost all other destinations were seemingly unaffected.

I ended up being sent to the Corendon Village hotel overnight - my one and only night so far in a hotel at KLM’s expense - and finally caught the first flight the next morning at crazy o’clock.

This is a case for which I engaged a claims agency to fight for compensation, and which is still grinding on….

Beware the winds of June at Schiphol!

I was given €15 to spend in Berlin!

€7 at Schiphol is indeed an insult piled upon injury!

All industries in NL are currently severely understaffed. There are more job vacancies right now than there are active jobseekers.

I would imagine the horror stories in the news are hardly a great recruitment tool for airport and airline workers. Anecdotally, it also appears that a much larger proportion of staff are reporting as sick.

BRU suffered its own wildcat strike earlier this week; there were some mentions of large queues at DUS in the Dutch news this week.

Some people may just decide to keep their summer travel on the surface this year; especially for trips within Europe.