Amexpat

I need to know about where the charter buses will be. They were in a lot off to the side, not in front of the terminal like the Flygbussen or scheduled buses.

Fredrik74

I don't know if someone knows for sure since we travel by normal buses. However, Swedavia says charter buses are departing from T4. It makes sense because the reason other buses are moved is due to construction work and I don't believe any previous lot would be available(although of course can't tell for sure)

https://www.swedavia.se/arlanda/buss/

the810

I imagine that the current mess doesn't extend to regional airports (such as UME), would that be correct? Thanks

nacho

Which mess?

Fredrik74

The current mess doesn't even extend to T2. Just as an FYI.

GUWonder

After around 7 or 7:30am either yesterday or Thursday, it seems like T5 general security wait times dropped from 45 minutes down to around 10-15 minutes.

Why hasn’t KEF had the kind of ramped up mess with security screening times that various other Schengen area TATL gateways with 6 or more North American destinations has had this year?

JR67

Because most of KEF’s volume is pass-through?

jerjeffr

I had the diamond VIP sale last week.
Is it still going for Gold members this week?

GUWonder

Isn’t most of AMS’s volume pass-through too? I leave AMS airport by surface transport means less than 1% of the time when I’m there.

KEF doesn’t need transit security like AMS, so that may be one of several reasons KEF’s not been as messed up this year as AMS and other Schengen area TATL gateways with 6 or more North American destinations. How many North American destinations does ARN serve with common carrier flights?

Seems to me that KEF has more North American common carrier destinations than ARN; and it is not all FI.

the810

While AMS indeed gets a lot of transit traffic, I'm pretty damn sure they have far more originating traffic than KEF. I mean, just Amsterdam metropolitan area alone has population of 2,5 milion, over 6 times more than the entire Iceland, and that's far from the entire catchment area of AMS. Based on the data I was able to find, Netherlands also receives about 15 times more tourists than Iceland, not to mention that Amsterdam/Hague/Rotterdam are slightly more important business hubs than Reykjavik. I also imagine that alternative job opportunities for people who used to work at an airport are far more scarce in Iceland compared to the Netherlands.

Apples and oranges.

GUWonder

Everything is proclaimed to be apples and oranges when trying to avoid comparison that aren’t welcome criticism and/or open the window toward criticism of some favorite. “Oh, but we’re different, you can’t compare” — the frequent excuse given by those opposed to continuous improvement efforts.

AMS also has many more security screeners than KEF. Before the pandemic. And also during and since. KEF is a heavily banked airport, perhaps even more critically so for passengers than AMS and/or ARN. Could it be that KEF has had its act together in a way that AMS and ARN haven’t? The unemployment rate in Iceland is probably lower than in Sweden. It may even be lower than or In the same range as the Netherlands. Denmark has a lower unemployment rate than Sweden, and CPH didn’t get as messy as ARN.

What’s the annual screener to passenger ratio history for the various Schengen area airports with 6 or more North American common carrier destinations? What’s the annual foreign passenger to national population ratio history for such airports in their respective countries?

oliver2002

The EU3 hubs (LHR, AMS, CDG, MUC, FRA, ZRH etc) are mostly (50-60%) connecting pax.

KEF seems to be similar: https://www.isavia.is/en/corporate/a...k-airport/2022

RedChili

There are lots of factors that matter when it comes to staffing and lines for security, e.g. how many checkpoints there are, and whether/which transfer passengers need to pass through security. IIRC, last time I was on a non-Schengen flight out of AMS (it's a looong time ago), they had security checkpoints at all non-Schengen gates, so even a Schengen to non-Schengen transfer passenger had to go through, something which is extremely staff consuming.

ARN suffers in this respect due to the multiple terminals and the way the airport has been built piece-by-piece since 1976. Before the pandemic, as far as I can remember, there were five main checkpoints for departing passengers plus two transfer checkpoints that were constantly manned and four transfer checkpoints on-call. In addition, there were also at least five checkpoints for staff within the terminals, plus a number of checkpoints for staff at the road gates into the airport. And then flights to some countries, like the USA, have an additional layer of security at the gate. We're talking about 15-25 checkpoints that need to be manned at any given time.

vanillabean

Meanwhile at HEL which I visited today:

https://www.finavia.fi/en/newsroom/2...irport-21-june

GUWonder

What’s with the Danish passport control — particularly some women, but not their male colleagues— trying to speak Swedish to some but not all Swedish passport users at CPH? . It’s unintelligible “Swedish” to some, unlike the intelligible English they can deliver.

Centralization of security checkpoints is one of those “efficient for the airport owner/operator” things that is not so great for travelers and opens the door for much more extreme outcomes at the margin. Multiple terminals and/or gates with their own security screening and airside connectivity was one of the things that benefited me.