Amsterdam Schiphol Airport

Not Verified | Please, put the telephone booth in the airport areas so that people can talk to their loved ones. I found not a single one, I asked people at the airport where can I make a telephone and no one knew if there was any. I don't have a cellular phone but I can afford some dollars to call my family from the airport.

✅ Trip Verified | Circumstances meant our daughter had to travel home with her two little boys aged 2 and 10 months. We the grandparents were booked on the same flight so were willing and able to help. The hardest part is going through security. We went through the barriers with our boarding pass, but our daughter with the buggy and two boys - one in a sling and one in the buggy - was directed to a gate. This meant we were separated as she was directed to the right and we were told to go to the left. We explained that we could help her and wanted to go with her, all that separated us was a waist height bar. The GS4 staff member said we couldn't be together and we didn't understand that both ways lead to the same place. She was very forceful and wouldn't listen to our plea. She stated again that both ways went to the same place. This was not true and meant our daughter had to cope with her babies though security. We had her bag, which we hadn't packed and didn't know the contents! (mainly nappies and toys, but an iPad was in it - of which we were unaware and she would have removed before going though). Her boys were then taken from her, while she was scanned. The two year old was quite worried by this. Everyone else, Easyjet desk and all staff were lovely, but this one member of staff made the whole experience most unpleasant and difficult for a mother with young children when there didn't seem to be any benefit to general security, which we wholly agree with and support.

Not Verified | Probably the worst international airport pretending to be an international airport. Queueing times, luggage handling. Customer friendliness, service orientation, practical thinking, proper solutions for all the passengers being lured to this airport as an 'international hub', all of this is shockingly lacking at this airport. 2 hours waiting for luggage doesn't even happen in the worst airports of the world. If I could skip it, I would.

✅ Trip Verified | Unfriendly and harsh security personnel. Such a bad experience before flying because it ruins your whole mood. Messy and bad crowd control. One of the worst airport experiences I’ve encountered.

Not Verified | One of the worst I have seen in my life; fancy but no substance. Dislike the fact that body scanner is used as a default means of screening unlike anywhere else in the developed world

✅ Trip Verified | Understaffed airport. Long queue. Bad crowd management. Rude staff. It looks like the airport management does not prepare for the volume of morning Asian flights at all. Only three of the Tax validation counters out of six was staffed despite the long queue of angry mainland Chinese tourists. (By the way, why isn't self-service a thing here?). The queue for security check is insanely long that the airport staff has to block people from entering at the departure halls. Not to mention that there is no attempt to divert the crowd at all so people would just come in and cause a little stampede in wait area. There are only four immigration counters with a long backlog of foreign tourists waiting to go home. The staff also rudely told people off when they asked about priority line, which they have none and there is no visible signage stating that. Dear management, please do learn how to airport from Changi, KLIA, Taoyuan or any Japanese airport.

✅ Trip Verified | I travel a reasonable amount and have to say Schiphol airport is one of the worst I have experienced in the last few years. I was travelling by myself with carry-on only luggage with BA. Firstly we taxied for 25 minutes. Not waiting for a stand but going all the way around the airport to D gates. The next challenge was trying to find your way out of the airport. No 'Exit' or 'Way out' or 'Passports' signs, just 'Arrivals Hall'. It was a very long walk and you were forced to pass through the shopping area. Three toilets I stopped at on the way had 1 or 2 urinals only and queues of people waiting. I eventually found the narrow entrance to the passport area where there was a large crowd of people being asked to wait by an official. EU passport holders were let through to the queue downstairs which was substantial, particularly for non-EU travellers. There were only 4 or 5 e-passport gates which seemed to operate much slower than the ones we have in the UK. Further walking to find my way out to a taxi rank. Then again a significant queue to actually get out of the buidling through a slow 'double-revolving door'. So landing to taxi rank took over an hour. I can imagine this would be significantly longer if you were travelling with bags, children or was a slow walker. On the reverse trip we must have been dropped off at the wrong part of the airport as it was a very long walk to the D gate area. Security was reasonable with new machines and took about 15 minutes. The main problem was the extremely slow e-passport gates. Maybe only about 10 machines each with a long queue of frustrated travellers behind. The machines were incredibly slow and I began to worry that I would miss my flight. The walk from passport control to gate D26 was again very long indeed. I had to run to catch my flight and wished I’d measured the distance. A few travellators helped but would take 20 minutes plus at a slow pace.

✅ Trip Verified | This airport could be really nice and comfortable - there is a lot of shops and food areas, not as expensive as some other European airports too. All information is also quite clear and signs very helpful. But when it comes to "human factor" it's just a nightmare, security check is extremely slow. I think I have never seen so many staff at security check and yet, it took some 40 minutes for 20 people which were in front of me to pass it. Staff seem bored and slow, if you mention that your gate is closing it's not bothering them at all. I met only one nice lady who helped me a bit to advance, but the rest of colleagues were as in kind of slow motion movie. Usually 1 hour 30 min before the flight is more than enough in any European airport, for internal (no passport control) flight, in this case I nearly missed my flight. klm flight attendants were very kind to wait for passengers stuck at security and apparently it's very common and well known problem. Of course it's important to keep a good level of security, and I think we are all thankful for that, but somehow other airports manage to organise everything much much more effectively. Just got an impression that staff is just unmotivated and bored. So your stress is almost kind of amusing for them.

Not Verified | Worst airport. From checking in, took over an hour and fifteen minutes to: drop bags (long queue), scan boarding pass to get to security (long queue), security (longest queue I have ever encountered at an airport in all my travelling days)! Not worthy of international airport status. Poor poor poor.

✅ Trip Verified | Schiphol airport is overloaded and unable to accommodate the customer load especially if you are passing through customs or passport check. Which even if you are part of the EU and traveling within the EU is still a nightmare. Even if you are first-class or apart of the EU you will still get stuck in this roadblock. This shocked me. Checked in 2 hours before our flight. Got a quick bite which I will admit the airport is pretty accommodating when in comes to food and shopping. Then we went to go find security check and that is when the nightmare began. We spent the 1st half-hour at a roadblock which entirely prevents from moving forward, and would only let limited groups make a mad dash through. Everyone runs up thinking they are out of the woods only to be met immediately by another queue for security check. This queue took another 30 minutes through an archaic snaking line system which finally led to our security check. At this point you think you are home free but no. Another 30 minutes in another archaic snaking line system where you aren't even sure is gong to your customs zone. This my EU friends (I'm American) you are still not saved because all passengers are queued and it isn't clarified which queue is the one you should belong to. Even if you ask them if there is priority boarding, 1st class, or EU passport, and I heard a lot of people asked this, you are shutdown until you're near enough to the customs check to find out which line you really need to be in. Customs check was fine but their agents have zero sense of urgency as they held a conversation with their coworkers or even other passengers. At this point, our 2 hours were up and we had 10 minutes to get to our terminal. We ran to our terminal which I feared correctly was farther away than I had hoped. We got stopped again for a sniffer dog at which I asked if we were close to our gate H. Not that I expect much in the way of customer service anywhere really I was told to "Just look around". It was another few minutes and guess what we made it! We boarded at the tail end of the crowd only to find out our flight was delayed for other passengers who were also stuck in their security queues. 30 minutes later we finally took off. At least 9 passengers missed their flight according to the flight staff. So lesson learned if you go to Schiphol airport plan on more than 2 hours even if you are connecting flights.