The mercury is touching thirty degrees today and Schiphol predicted peak crowds. You may think that this is a recipe for misery with all the recent reports, but nothing is further from the truth: the tents outside, specially set up to protect waiting travelers from the sun, are empty. NH Nieuws investigated why the airport does have things under control now.
The tents that Schiphol has erected outside to keep waiting passengers cool are empty.
There are some lines in the departure hall
The last time great chaos arose at Schiphol was on August 1. Travelers sometimes had to queue for more than four hours to get through security. On that day, 182,894 passengers traveled through Schiphol. Today there are more, namely 183,260. Slightly more people left that day, namely 61,479, compared to 60,808 today.
Travelers had prepared for large crowds – NH Nieuws
Schiphol’s pressure meter shows that the airport expected a peak day today in both the departure and arrival halls. For example, the lines at Departure Hall 3 started outside early this morning under the canopies that Schiphol installed earlier this summer to protect waiting passengers from the sun.
Around 12:00, those rows seem to have disappeared like snow in the sun, as it turns out when NH reporter Celine Sulsters takes a look:
Also at the other departure halls the rows do not extend outside. And the rows inside are not that bad. It is a relief for present travelers, who often prepared for the worst. “We were here 4.5 hours in advance, but that was not really necessary,” says a young man who is about to fly to Zakynthos in Greece. “So then we started drinking beer,” he laughs.
A lady who is going to look for the cold in Iceland looks around the fairly empty departure halls with wide eyes. “We had brought extra food and drink,” she explains her and her husband’s survival strategy.
Extra security guards
The absence of extremely long queues at Schiphol is no longer an exception. From August 1, only now and then there have been rows outside in the morning. And that while the airport allows more than 5,000 more travelers to depart daily than in July. But how come it’s actually getting so much better?
According to a Schiphol spokesperson, hiring extra security personnel has indeed helped. “We see that the queues at departure are shorter, mainly due to a higher availability of security personnel,” he says. Schiphol is now also deploying staff to stop people who want to queue more than four hours in advance. Partly because of this, the departure halls are not full. The crowds are very dependent on the time of day, emphasizes the spokesperson.
A peak in the number of arriving travelers (67,466) did not cause any problems today, according to Schiphol.