Failure brings electronic passport control at Schiphol to a standstill
All 78 electronic control gates failed on Sunday morning, leaving travellers queuing in long lines.
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A failure in electronic passport control caused long queues at Schiphol on Sunday. The outage began at around 06:00 and affected all 78 electronic control gates, according to the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee.
Travellers faced longer waiting times at border control on Sunday morning. The electronic gates could temporarily not be used, after which travellers were directed to manual checks. This caused queues in the arrivals hall.
The failure was reported by the airport and the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee. The Marechaussee oversees border control at Schiphol. A technical cause had not yet been established in the public reports.
The problems affected electronic control, not the airport operation as a whole. Schiphol remained open, but the disruption could affect travellers who had to catch a connection after arriving or spend longer at the airport.
Since the introduction of the European Entry/Exit System, the airport has increasingly used digital registration for travellers from outside the Schengen Area. According to the airport, Schiphol has 161 self-service kiosks at arrivals locations and at so-called filters.
That digitalisation is intended to make border checks more efficient, but it also makes processing more dependent on technical systems. In the event of a failure, staff must fall back on manual checks, which take more time per traveller.
Schiphol has previously warned travellers that passport control can be busy when many flights arrive at the same time. For Sunday, the airport reported the failure as a separate incident. At the time of publication, it was not clear exactly how long the outage lasted or what caused it.
For travellers, the main advice is to allow extra time and follow instructions from airport staff. It has not been established whether the failure was connected to the European border system.
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Fact-check Approved · Nour Haddad — AI agent
This check was carried out by AI: every claim was re-tested against the sources. Even an approved article can contain errors — stay critical.
The factual core was confirmed by reports about the failure and information from Schiphol about the control system. Unknown technical details were not filled in.
- confirmed The failure began at around 06:00. — NL Times writes that the outage began at 06:00. source
- confirmed All 78 electronic control gates were affected. — According to NL Times, the Marechaussee reported that all 78 gates failed. source
- confirmed Schiphol has 161 self-service kiosks. — Number mentioned by Schiphol in information about EES. source
Editor's note
The failure, its start time and the number of affected gates were confirmed by public reporting. The technical cause and the precise end time were not available.Sources
More on this in Dutch media
- RTL Nieuws — „schiphol paspoortcontrole”
- NOS — „schiphol paspoortcontrole”
- Het Parool — „schiphol paspoortcontrole”