FlyingFrZ

Thats what I figured. Unfortunately I booked these flights months ago before all the mayhem.

Now I have to figure out a way to go hand luggage only. Easier for me than the Mrs. :/

Maybe I can ship our luggage to Nice but never looked into that before. I imagine itll be pricey from California.

GUWonder

The airlines, their ground handlers and/or AMS.

Fly enough under enough circumstances, and even things better avoided (by some or most) more/most of the times end up being part of the picture at times.

evol

Ooof this isn't going to get any better is it. It would be nice for KLM to allow us to waive penalties and outright cancel/refund flights that fall within this period; so travelers can make other arrangements in advance. Iʻd think it would help them out to let passengers divert from the situation and lessen the bodies in AMS at any given time.

I realize itʻs the Airport Authority instating these new capacity rules but still. Perhaps after a few days the info will trickle through and airlines will make some decisions.

arf04

Yep, it would be good to know with some notice what KL plans to do with flights that they will have to cancel. I have a connection at AMS (out of YYC) to NUE on the 6th of July and back a week later, so if I know early enough that they will cancel then perhaps I can get rebooked to MUC, for example, if they are still operating those flights. I imagine all the cancellations will get messy fast! Time to brush up on on my travel zen in case things get ugly

Atavanhallen

Oof, I booked my travel before I had become aware of the nightmare at AMS. I’m flying LAX>AMS>GDN, original KL flight from AMS>GDN on 5 July was cancelled and now I have a 9 hour layover. Given the nightmare of security, would it be prudent to just book Lounge 25? Ideally, I wanted to take advantage of the sleep rooms in Lounge 52 but I also don’t want to wait hours in line to reenter the terminal. Thoughts?

irishguy28

Cancel those plans. You can easily fly from London direct to NCE.

FlyingFrZ

Problem is our flight is LAX-AMS on BA. It is the return portion of a ticket we had to push back from last December. We were just going to catch another flight to NCE since we didn't want to stay in Amsterdam. I would love to terminate in London, but chances are BA won't short check our bags.

What's funny is even if we take only hand baggage and fly LHR to NCE, BA cancelled a few NCE flights so taking the earliest departure available we would actually arrive later than if we flew LHR-AMS-NCE

mfkne

Amsterdam is a single terminal airport, you do not have to leave the terminal to go from lounge 52 to 25. All you need to clear is transfer immigration, and there haven't been reports of those taking unusually long.

Sjoerd

Two hours in AMS for your plans would be ambitious in the best of times.
Things that could go wrong:
1) delay of your BA flight;
2) immigration lines;
3) long wait for bags;
4) lines at KL bag drop;
5) lines for security to re-enter the terminal.

If you are lucky all could be smooth and you will have time for a coffee. But you will need to be quite lucky.

irishguy28

The way things stand, you *will* be staying in Amsterdam!

Meaning you've asked to change your ticket from LAX-LHR-AMS to LAX-LHR (or LAX-LHR-NCE), and they have refused? Rather than asking to short-check your bags, you should be asking to change the destination.
I think BA has already dropped all Covid-related flexibility, but given that your ticket was booked some time ago, and in J, you may have greater flexibility to make changes to your ticket.
The KLM ticket can be cancelled for a refund (KLM and AF are quite generous regarding cancellations now)

NickB

You mean in the same way as FTers had seen back in Spring 2020 that it would all be over by September? And again that it would be all over by Summer 21? The transport and hospitality industries have had several false starts over the last couple of years so circumspection is perhaps not surprising.

Also, recruitment problems are not confined to Schiphol. There are recruitment issues in multiple countries and across multiple industries, especially transport and hospitality, i.e. the industries that were hit especially hard by the pandemic and reduced staff more than average . Yes, some have done better than others and Schiphol was slower off the mark than others but the idea that this is a problem which is unique to Schiphol and that there are no staffing issues anywhere else belies reality.

etiene

I'm guessing the Schiphol mess is why I can't find any SkyTeam Z availability to AMS in early September, despite it having been there a couple of days ago. Available to other airports too, just seems to be AMS... [Sigh]

remymartin

Both BA and AF fly direct LHR-NCE. Due to the competition, ticket prices I've seen have been reasonable. Save yourself the trouble of connecting through AMS?

evol

They are not *too* generous, I tried to cancel my ticket for Aug 4 BER-AMS and they showed a refund of $34 on a $126 fare...

HadesNL

A sumner full of uncertainties:
https://nos.nl/artikel/2433015-ondui...kunnen-vliegen

departing via Amsterdam airport:
- those booking packages (flight+hotel) can be rebooked by their agencies
- those having individual tickets = uncertainty (causal damage by flight cancellation is at own risk)