Amsterdam Schiphol Airport

Airport staff seem to try, but KLM has a huge presence and KLM staff are disorganized and rude. The terminal is barely adequate in terms of seating, bathrooms and decent food near the gates. It seems designed to create huge long queues of people everywhere. Just as an example, at an international terminal handling huge jets with more than 80 gates I counted only 3 restrooms with a total of 10 stalls for women. I suspect the situation was similar for men's rooms because there was also a queue out the door for the men. Scant overpriced poor selections of food and water, truly inadequate seating. There are signs posted in several language but both the design of the airport and the placement of signs is very non-intuitive. Significant service desks are mislabeled or ambiguously labeled. Staff have a tendency to just wave you off in a vague direction instead of providing actual directions. We had a missed flight and needed to reschedule a transfer. Transfer desks are numbered and are not labeled by which airline they serve. None of the desks seem to agree on whether they serve specific airlines or whether all desks serve all airlines. They allowed several transfer lines to grow to several thousand passengers in each queue with little done to ameliorate the situation for over 6 hours - until about an hour before the desks closed.

This airport is on the way down. For departure my main criterion is comfortable seating. There used to be some of this at Schiphol but a refurbishment towards less confortable seating and more capacity is underway. The new seats that are coming after the inconvenience of the building are of the type: dont sit too long please instead wander around shops. Pity, Schiphol used to be nice. It used to have good signage as well but on the last visit things were extremely unclear perhaps as a result of the refurbishment.

Last year I commented on my departure to North America from Schiphol, unfavourably. This year I transited, flying in from North America, clearing customs, and flying onto another European city. It was not pleasant. While I like KLM, I will avoid Schiphol in future. The airport is still under construction, and seems chaotic. On disembarking from the transatlantic flight you go through security before anything else. This did not make sense to me. Then you proceed to clear customs. This is an airless, hot funnel that has several hundred people, in no particular line, just a jumble. It took over an hour of jostling and elbowing to get through. There was an elderly refaced airport employee angrily directing people. I think his purpose was to give priority to those with tight connections. There is a sign for "business and priority" passengers. It led to a dead end, which made you return to the "funnel". I think it might be better to go out, as if leaving the airport and re-enter by the domestic flights security area.

Amsterdam Schiphol is a great airport for both transfers and regular departures/arrivals. New central security check works flawlessly, even on the busiest days. Also really like the fact that the airport uses technological innovations in a smart way, for example the self-service passport control. Smoking lounges are decent, plenty of shopping and even a casino and Rijksmuseum can be found at the airport. Definitely amongst the best airports in the world in my opinion.

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. Nice, clean airy terminal with easy signs to follow as we had a connecting flight. Queuing times at passport control wasn't too bad, you expect queues here so wasn't too bothered. Announcements are very easy to understand and toilets were very clean.

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport - Very efficient airport, a bit "cold" maybe, but has and does everything one would expect from an airport. Probably the best European airport considering the heavy load of daily traffic. Major works are ongoing, but well signed and do give me the feeling that Schiphol will be even better in the future.

Amsterdam Airport could be quite challenging. Arrivals are ok. Even if you are a traveller with special needs or a young family with children, travelling with pushchairs. The arrival hall is big, the luggage belts are easy accessible. The departure halls are big, there is plenty of check in lines, but there is lack of the seating area and lack of electrical plug-ins. The airport itself is quite big, so plan to walk a lot. It also depends a lot with which airline you are flying. For example, we had a transfer and since the airlines we used did not have code share agreement, we could not check it to the final destination at the start of our journey. That means that you need to go to transfer counters and there is a BIG challenge and a lot of opportunities for improvements at Amsterdam Airport. There is plenty of self-check in machines, but then again, it depends with which airline you are flying. We used the machines and tried 3 times, but the system would not let us through. Then, you are redirected to the transit counter and every time we were there, there was only one counter working and the line of passengers was long. Passengers were all nervous, some were in a hurry more than others. It was a mess. If you need to transit there, make sure you have enough time between flights.

Positives of Amsterdam Schiphol Airport: the train access from Amsterdam City, not too far to walk, good signposting and shopping, automatic passport control. Not so good is KLM's automated baggage check-in (still needed a lot of assistance from staff), and the centralised security lack any charm from its staff. Overall positive though.

Good airport. Signs were clear and easy to know where to go. Distance to gate can be rather large (for me up to 20 minutes on foot). Before immigration, many shops adjacent (railway station). After immigration, many stores as well. Ground staff very helpful. The ceiling of the airport was very low and it looks very dark sometimes.

A fantastic airport with a big problem : the area where the EU travellers collect the luggage is very small. Collecting the bags is chaotic.