Schiphol boss gives airport’s summer performance a mediocre grade

Schiphol chief executive Pieter van Oord has given the airport’s summer holiday operations a seven out of ten, speaking at a gathering of airlines in Aalsmeer on Friday 28 August. The airport handled 12.5 million passengers over the summer.

Hand baggage screening ran well in his judgement, but other parts of the operation went less smoothly. The biggest worry remains the EU’s new digital entry system, EES, which requires travellers from outside the European Union to register at a machine on arrival.

That process is too slow, Van Oord said, and the Ministry of Justice is now looking at how to solve it.

The red button

In the weeks before the holidays Schiphol had called the EES situation untenable. That the summer avoided major chaos is largely because the Koninklijke Marechaussee could press what Van Oord called the red button at peak moments, letting arrivals skip registration entirely.

That escape route is supposed to close at the end of the year, and the sector depends on individual member states’ governments to make the system workable. Waiting times for non-EU citizens at the final border check still sometimes run far too long, he said.

Strikes he calls unnecessary

Van Oord’s positive verdict on hand baggage screening is not shared by the unions.

FNV and CNV staged short strikes this week over work pressure, saying climate control and rosters are not in order after a tender moved 2,000 security staff to a new employer, with chaos around uniforms, passes and schedules as a result.

Van Oord called the strike unnecessary, saying temperatures inside the security areas never reached the thirty degrees complained of. Schiphol met the unions again on Thursday without reaching agreement.

Baggage far past the norm

The seven is also down to the ground handling companies, which were short of staff at times. For European flights the norm is 40 minutes from landing until the last case is on the belt; this summer it sometimes took an hour and a half or more.

For flights from outside Europe the norm is 55 minutes. Van Oord said the handlers must arrange sufficient staff, noting that nobody landing at one in the morning on a Transavia flight wants to wait that long.

More than 85,000 passengers at Dutch airports faced delays of over three hours this summer, with 0.55 percent of flights in the Netherlands delayed.

Fewer handlers from next year

Schiphol wants to cut the number of ground handlers from next year. A tender for that was won by KLM, Viggo and Dnata, and airlines must now sign with one of the three.

Several companies that lost out are taking the decision to court.

Source: telegraaf.nl