Passport e-gate outage brings long queues at Amsterdam Schiphol

All 78 electronic passport-control gates at Amsterdam Schiphol stopped working on Sunday, October 18, after a technical failure, the airport's border police said. The outage began at around 06:00 local time and pushed departing and transferring passengers onto staffed desks for manual checks.

Queues averaged about an hour, according to Dutch media reports citing airport officials. Some travellers waited as long as 90 minutes. Every available manual counter was opened and officers carried out less extensive checks to ease the backlog. It was not enough to prevent substantial delays.

The failure hit during the Netherlands' autumn school holiday period, when passenger numbers at the airport are already higher than usual.

The cause was still under investigation on Sunday. There was no immediate estimate for when the system would come back into service. The Royal Netherlands Marechaussee said it had no reason at present to suspect a cyberattack.

Schiphol advised passengers flying from or through the airport to allow extra time and to keep an eye on their flight information. The disruption affected passport control rather than security screening, and the source reported no widespread flight cancellations.