scottpenderson

It does appear to be for sale again, though my guess is that they would prefer people choose a different routing. For a one way AMS-SFO they are offering Y class economy ticket and on a round trip booking they are offering to sell me a B class economy ticket.

GUWonder

If the reductions are to be proportional to the airline’s contribution to passenger totals at AMS, wouldn’t UA have more to reduce than AA but less to reduce than Delta? For those prospective AMS passengers wanting to minimize the chances of being hit by a pared AMS flight, it may be somewhat safer to be booked on a carrier that has fewer passengers out of AMS than UA has,

lhrsfo

Thanks

Boraxo

AMS is a mess and not getting any better. For my trip last month I found the KLM forum has the best info (no shocker) and a running thread with day-by-day guidance.

For several days last month (and maybe more) all of the SFO-AMS flights on UA were delayed 3+ hours. So YMMV but personally I would not count on making a short connection at least until the fall season arrives. The immigration lines are tolerable (if you are connecting to EU) but if you leave the airport you may regret it as security lines can stretch for 2-4 hours if you aren't flying biz or have Privium status. If it was me I would take a train if that is an option to UK, France etc. If you are looking at one flight a day then I'd want at least 2 hours and maybe more depending on the UA track record for your flight.

Yes. But there is often more than one option as I found when my SFO-AMS was delayed 3 hours:

(1) .bomb offered my an earlier flight to ORD or EWR with a connection to AMS that would have arrived before my original flight. I passed and rightfully so as the ORD-AMS flight was cancelled on multiple dates.

(2) take the original flight and rebook the connection from AMS (this is what I ultimately did)

(3) find a 3rd option through your own research and ask UA to rebook.

I went with 2 and ended up exiting the airport and flying the following day. None of these should require additional airfare.

jentut

Flying business from AMS - SFO. I am trying to see if we get a priority security line. No clear answers anywhere…. Does anyone know? Thanks in advance..

avi8tir

Yes, you proceed to the upper level past the check in areas which has fast track. When I flew out a few weeks back on UA41 to Houston, took about 25 minutes. The articles you see online about the chaos at AMS largely pertain to economy travelers. dont check a bag if you can avoid.... check in lines can be long.

My experience was smooth with the exception of having to wait for a pushback tug for over an hour after the door closed.

Boraxo

Correct. Connecting passengers (non-Schengen->non-Schengen) have the quickest experience, particularly if security is not required (depends on country of origin) as no immigration is required. Next fastest are the Schengen->non-Schengen or non-Schengen->Schengen (immigration required but maybe not security). I would think 2 hours between flights is sufficient for any of these scenarios.

The worst times are for people originating at AMS or who leave the airport and then return and have to clear security. You can see many photos of the lines to enter the airport, check bags, security, etc. Even as biz class I had a half hour wait at the TK counter (couldn't do online checkin). Biz class is much faster than economy if you can locate the right lines. At this point if you are originating at AMS I would allocate at least 1 hour for biz class (just to clear security and immigration) and 4 hours for economy. Again the best daily updates are in the KLM forum.

FlaAnnie

Here’s what we learned the hard way. UA advised that we arrive 3 hours before our flight, which was to depart 0915. What they don’t say is that there are no desk agents until 0615. When we arrived at 0600 (good doobies that we are), the lines looked for all the world like the most popular ride at Disney. And there were no signs marking the masses as queued up for UA. Promptly at 0615, agents appeared like rock stars taking the stage, and the UA signs above them lit up.
No agents were there assisting or directing the masses and there were no signs, but we figured out that there was a shortcut to the one agent and smaller queue checking Polaris and Premier passengers. Our flight was otherwise unremarkable; great crew, terrible food, and our baggage made it both going and coming. Yay! Bottom line—I would never recommend that anyone fly into/out of AMS in other than Polaris these days.

danhunterpost

I have a 65 minute United > LOT connection on Friday morning. Most of the issues reported seems to be with passengers originating at AMS can can anyone advise how transiting is within the last week or two? Also, does anyone know if I need to go through security as well as customs at AMS or just customs? Is 65 minutes even doable now?

lhrsfo

Likewise, Mrs LHRSFO has a connection Aer Lingus > UA, with two hours in theory. Will there be security checks from Ireland, which is in the EU but outside Schengen.