Many Schiphol passengers encounter lengthy, but manageable lines on Saturday

Passengers traveling from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam on Saturday encountered several long lines in the morning and afternoon, particularly for check-in counters. Multiple airlines had queues for ticketing and baggage drop-offs which required passengers to wait for over an hour. Although school holidays officially began on Saturday for the central third of the Netherlands, the airport expected a busy day, but not a peak number of departing passengers.

The lines for security checkpoints varied depending on which departures hall was used. Some passengers queued up up for over two hours to clear security at Departures 1 throughout the morning and afternoon hours.

In a message to NL Times, airline passenger Delaney Mann said she needed 45 minutes to check in for a flight within the Schengen Area that was scheduled to leave from Departures 1. From there, it was another 95 minutes to get through security. She arrived at the airport after 10:30 a.m., and had just a few minutes to spare before her flight began boarding at 2 p.m.

The line to enter Departures 2 security checkpoints actually began at Departures 3, but moved rapidly with passengers saying they needed 30-45 minutes earlier in the afternoon. Those using Departures 3 needed up to an hour late Saturday morning.

Schiphol Airport has been dealing with a shortfall of security, baggage, and cleaning staff since air travel began to pick back up in April. Since then, the airport has managed to add 400 people to its workforce, half of whom were hired directly by the airport. The airport also put a maximum capacity on the number of daily departing passengers it intended to process during the summer holiday period, forcing airlines to either freeze ticket sales, combine flights, cancel itineraries, or move departures to other regional airports.

KLM, the largest airline by passenger total at Schiphol, announced earlier this week that it would make further cuts to its timetable to make the situation at the airport more manageable. The airline intended to cut between 1,000 and 2,100 flights, or roughly 10 to 20 round trip pairs per day, in addition to previously announced scheduling changes.