Long waiting times again on Saturday at Schiphol Airport. On social media, quite a few people complain about long queues of over an hour. “Schiphol is horror”, travelers tweeted.
According to an airport spokeswoman, like Friday it is again a very busy day at the airport.
“We are very annoyed that people have to wait a long time. We are doing our best to make your travel as smooth as possible.”
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines informed all its passengers to arrive at the airport 3 hours prior to departure for all destinations (Europe / Intercontinental), due to capacity constraints and waiting times at security.
Forum discussion: http://www.luchtzak.be/forums/viewtopic.php?p=350315#p350315
Massive queues @Schiphol AirPort today. At least they allow us to be entertained between check in and customs. #travel #Dutch pic.twitter.com/bkadyg8qlY
— King Chianti (@Smitsmeister) April 22, 2017
3rd queue 1hr spent Approx 1050 people in front of me in 7 rows of ~150 why can’t #schiphol figure this out and manage it?! pic.twitter.com/rVwL9ymf1U
— John Blazey (@John_Blazey) April 22, 2017
From the several comments in the Facebook page of Luchtzak, this one is worth mentioning: it was posted by a Dutch Air Traffic Controller:
For years, AMS had the ambition to grow and grow. This has been so far that the number of passengers has indeed risen considerably. In addition, there was a sad discovery that a number of slots were not used and could still be forgiven on paper. But also on the technology level it was already at the top. Yet only 9,500 slots were released. With the 5-runway structure, but especially with the severe limitations due to noise ceilings, there is a fear that security is becoming questionable.
In addition, the infrastructure for the passengers (check-in, security & passport control) has never grown sufficiently with the increase of air traffic. In fact, in order to make even more profit, restrictions / cuts have been applied such that the available capacity is far too small for the now expanded offer.
This weekend is the first peak weekend and shows what KLM and other airlines have seen coming since a long time and have strongly reported: the cup is full and over. One hundred minutes to get the full check in is scandalous. Yesterday and the day before, more than 100 passengers missed their flight because they were late at the gate. This causes new problems, because no-show means that the luggage must be taken off board. That means delay so that the slot is missed …
With an annual income of over 900,000 euros, it is good for the CEO to say that he is managing a large and modern airport, but the paying customers (passengers & airlines) are the victims of that pride.
