Will transit via Schiphol be affected from 29 March?
Q We are flying to Chicago via Amsterdam Schiphol on 1 April. This is a route we have used for many years and the transit through Schiphol has always been seamless and pain-free. With the UK leaving the EU on 29 March, what impact will this have on how we transit through Schiphol?
Lorna W
A Leaving the European Union shouldn’t have any effect on the actual transit process through Schiphol. Due to the UK’s position outside the Schengen area there will be no change to present arrangements. There is no need to go through any form of border control, and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has just announced that the present security deal – whereby a search at a UK airport is regarded as sufficient screening at the Amsterdam airport – will continue. There will be an extra security check at the gate because of the requirements of flights to the US.
From all the evidence I have seen, that all seems clear enough. EU airlines such as KLM will continue to be
able to fly to and from the UK just as they do now.
But I cannot completely rule out disruption on flights between the UK and European Union in the event of a no-deal Brexit (or a “non-negotiated EU exit”, as the CAA puts it), at least for the first few days after 29 March when you will be travelling,
The nature of the disruption? It could be as simple as congestion at British airports due to the need to implement and police stringent passport checks.
At present UK passports are valid for travel anywhere in the European Union, up to and including the date of expiry. But the British government is warning travellers: “Some passports with up to 15 months validity remaining may not be valid for travel.” This is because of the EU deeming that no non-EU passport can be valid for more than 10 years.
The check is not relevant for you: whether you are transiting in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Madrid or Paris, you will need only the documentation for your final destination; the US does not require any minimum validity. But other passengers will be going only as far as the Dutch capital or transferring to EU destinations.
A scan of the machine-readable strip on the photo page of your passport at check-in normally takes less than a second. Crucially, though, this strip contains only the expiry date of your passport. Check-in staff will need to make a manual inspection of the issue date, and calculate the presumed expiry date according to the EU. This could add considerably to the process, delaying flights and possibly leading to cancellations.
But I think the chances are that your journey will proceed as smoothly as normal – and in any event, at this stage in the tragi-comedy that Brexit has become, there is nothing that you or I can do.
Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder