KLM announces dozens of cancellations today as Schiphol lines grow

KLM has started canceling air travel for passengers departing from Schiphol to prevent unmanageable crowds. Thirty-four flights will be canceled on Saturday and KLM is still investigating how many trips will be affected on Sunday and Monday.

Travelers who were supposed to leave on Saturday were informed late on Friday evening that their trip would not take place. By canceling flights, the largest airline at Schiphol is responding to the airport's call for thousands fewer departing passengers every day. Instead, the planes will leave the airport empty to pick up travelers at their destination.

"Schiphol has asked us to limit the number of boarding passengers. That is an extremely annoying request, because we already have to cancel 10 to 20 flights a day and this is on top of that," says a KLM spokesperson. "But in this way we meet the request to limit departing passengers, queues at security are shorter, returning passengers can travel as usual and we relieve the pressure on the operation."

Schiphol announced on Friday that, until the end of October, 9,250 fewer passengers could depart from the airport every day than previously indicated. This intervention is necessary because there are too few security guards for the security check.

“Staffing levels at security today are lower than what Schiphol had requested of the security companies. As a result, there is a shortage of security personnel and the number of waiting travellers is increasing,” Schiphol said in a statement on Saturday morning.

KLM advises travelers to rebook the canceled trips, but cannot guarantee that the replacement flight will depart on the same day. Customers who incur additional costs as a result of the procedure "will be compensated in the usual way," the airline writes.

Aside from the KLM announcement, a handful of flights operated by EasyJet, Transavia, United, and Vueling also cancelled one or two flights each by 9:30 a.m.

Saturday was again expected to be a particularly busy day with a high volume of passengers departing from Schiphol Airport. Travelers who were at the airport on Friday told NL Times that lines again extended for hours at some security checkpoints.

The airport warned departing passengers not to enter the airport more than four hours before their flight. “Because it's busy, travellers are arriving at the airport much too early."