Long queues at Schiphol are due to negligence: KLM director
The long waits travellers at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport are currently experiencing are due to negligence on the part of the airport authorities, the operational director of airline KLM says in Tuesday’s Telegraaf.
Unrestrained growth, marketing bonuses focusing on passenger numbers and a lack of investment have led to the queues, René de Groot told the paper.
Last weekend passengers were waiting an average of 100 minutes to get through security controls and several hundred missed flights, the paper said.
‘Schiphol has made the wrong choices,’ he said. ‘The airport has used marketing bonuses to generate unnecessary growth and has neglected to invest in proper infrastructure.’
Complaints about long waits first emerged last summer and this January, KLM director Pieter Cornelisse warned that queues to go through security would be long at peak periods this year.
Last year the airport processed 63.6 million passengers, a rise of 9% compared with 2015. KLM says Schiphol is allowing more aircraft to use its facilities when it does not have the proper capacity to deal with them.
Schiphol told the Volkskrant that the new, temporary terminal will absorb much of the holiday traffic pressure this year. A new pier will be opened in 2019 and a new terminal four years after that.
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