Julia Caporali wants to go to Berlin. But she would rather have her suitcase. On Monday she and her elderly parents would transfer from Brazil to Schiphol. But it had snowed, the flight was canceled and the KLM employees said: come back tomorrow and we can give you your suitcase. So she stood in line for customer service at nine o’clock on Tuesday morning.
About eight hours later, a KLM employee comes and tells her she better get out of the line. “You can no longer be helped today,” he says to the group that has gathered around him, “the counter will be closing soon.” The best they can do, he says, “is to arrange it in the app.”
Sia Barry takes her phone out of her pocket, opens the app and shows the screen to the man: the app doesn’t work, there are no other flights to book, you can’t even cancel. She also stood in line for ten hours on Monday because she could not get to Milan.
“We just want our luggage,” says Caporali. “Then you have to go to the baggage department,” says the KLM man. “But they didn’t want to help us there,” she says. “Then I don’t know either,” he says. Meanwhile, a few meters away, another Schiphol employee tells an exhausted-looking Brit that it is impossible to collect luggage.
Four days after the first snowflakes fell, Schiphol Airport is still largely closed. On Tuesday, the number of canceled flights increased steadily throughout the day, until there were more than six hundred by the end of the afternoon – much more than at other European airports that are dealing with snow. At least the same number of cancellations is expected again for Wednesday. In the meantime, the liquid used to spray ice on planes at Schiphol is rapidly running out; the airport must have additional supplies flown in from abroad.
No answer
Schiphol likes to distinguish itself with the ‘hub’ function it has in international air traffic and KLM with the many destinations to which the company flies passengers. Result: there are many people in line on Tuesday who say that they did not want to be in the Netherlands at all, but had to go to Edmonton or to Glasgow or Buenos Aires. Schiphol should have been a short stop in a long journey.
Some passengers transiting through Schiphol have been waiting for a new flight since Saturday.
Photo Robin Utrecht/ANP
They sometimes say that they have been waiting for a flight since Saturday and show on their phones that they have not received any answers to questions from the digital customer service to which KLM staff refer them at the airport. And they are surprised that the airport was so affected by a few snow showers at all. “I’ll tell you one thing,” says Mike Rodley, who has been trying to fly to their home in San Diego with his granddaughter for two days, “Schiphol is no longer the favorite hub for many people.” For the second night in a row they go to a hotel – without luggage.
The customer service line has now shrunk in the background. Halfway through the afternoon, employees suddenly started to move partitions with photos of tulips a few meters further forward. Anyone who wanted to join was told by one employee that it would be better to go to a hotel and by another the tip to fly via Brussels. One moment a KLM employee said fiercely to a traveler: “We are not going to help you today, get out of the line!” At other times, sympathetic employees use a tablet to go through the queue to find seats on the handful of flights that do operate. In the background there is a constant announcement: if your flight has been cancelled, please leave the airport.
But Julia Caporali wants her luggage first. Shortly after the man tells him that there is no point in waiting, a woman comes to ask for the claim papers for her suitcases. Ten minutes later she returns. It’s too busy, she says, “we can’t take your luggage. When you get home, report that your luggage is lost.” Caporali shakes her head and moves a few feet in line. She takes a sip from the bottle of water she was given. The only thing, she says. Next to her, Sia Barry says: “Hopefully I’ll be home on Friday.”
An hour and a half later, dozens of extra KLM employees suddenly arrive. Some are doing their best to connect travelers to a flight. Others look around the increasingly quiet departure hall, looking for passengers to help.
Live blog
Winter weather
Code orange (again) on Wednesday in almost the entire country
The journalistic principles of NRC