Both Schiphol and KLM have taken measures to prevent crowds at the airport. While Schiphol is presenting an action plan against the crowds today, KLM will stop selling tickets for flights departing from the airport in the coming days.
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Of long queues and the busy at Schiphol of the past few weeks, are expected to last through the summer holidays. The airport is today introducing measures to improve the current situation.
“It is not that travelers will no longer stand in line”, Schiphol CEO Dick Benschop tempers expectations, “but it is the promise that we will do everything we can to provide travelers with a predictable and pleasant Schiphol experience.”
Four action points
Schiphol has drawn up four points in the ‘Summer 2022 Action Plan’. According to the management, more efforts should be made to recruit employees and work at Schiphol should become more attractive. Schiphol also wants to work on better traffic flow at the airport and wants to make new agreements with airlines about the planning of flights.
These agreements are mainly related to the relaxation of landing duties. Normally, airlines that have landing rights at Schiphol should make use of this as much as possible. In order to tackle the crowds, Schiphol wants to give the airlines more room to cancel flights themselves while retaining their rights.
KLM criticism
One of those airlines, KLM, is critical of the latter plan. It wants work to be done first on other measures, such as spreading flights and diverting to other airports. “Schiphol is not yet at the level of 2019, it is worrying that this is already causing such problems due to shortages at Schiphol security,” a KLM spokesperson told NOS.
KLM is also taking measures itself: no new tickets will be sold for flights from the airport until Sunday. A spokesperson emphasizes at NH News that travelers who have already booked tickets for the next few days don’t have to worry about their trip being canceled. It only concerns new tickets from Schiphol that will not be sold until Sunday.
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