Schiphol airport is to increase the number of security staff and add new lanes, following recent reports of lengthy queues at immigration and security.

Readers have been complaining of long queues on our forum, with one user saying they were “appalled at the queues for check-in and security”.

The airport said that it was taking the measures “following an assessment of the May holiday in order to reduce waiting times at the security checkpoints for passengers, and to more effectively cope with passenger peak periods”.

Schiphol said that it had deployed additional staff during the May holiday, but that “their numbers were not always sufficient”, adding that it was working with security companies to look into “how many additional staff will be necessary on busy days”.

The airport is also installing two additional security lanes in Departure Hall 2, “which will allow more passengers to go through security simultaneously”.

The Amsterdam hub said that the measure “is in addition to the existing summer measures and the additional security staff that had already been decided on earlier”.

“The process at the airport is comparable to the inner workings of a mechanical watch,” said Jos Nijhuis, CEO of Royal Schiphol Group.

“For optimal efficiency, it is crucial that all cogs fit perfectly. If one of the cogs comes to a halt, this has an immediate impact on the overall result.

“In the end, passengers don’t care who or what they are queueing for. That is a shared responsibility, in which Schiphol should take the lead.

“Together with the airlines, the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee and other partners, we want to offer people a pleasant beginning and end to their business trip or holiday.’

The airport said that an assessment of queues at the airport’s airline check-in desks, security checkpoints and passport control – has shown that “shorter waiting times are possible at each of these locations”.

schiphol.com