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I've noticed that when taking non-Schengen flights at AMS (Schiphol airport, Amsterdam), there is no centralized security check after you enter the airport and go through passport control. Instead, the security check happens right at the gate. The security checkpoint opens about an hour before the flight departs from that gate. This system seems to have a huge number of disadvantages:

  • It must be really expensive - there's an X-ray machine, metal detectors, and for some gates even millimeter wave scanners at each gate.
  • Also, adding to the expense, there are washrooms at each gate, since passengers can no longer use the common area washrooms after passing through security.
  • It's really inconvenient for the passengers. There's no way to reach the seats inside the gate area before the security checkpoint opens, so people are forced to either wait far away in other areas of the airport, or (as I've seen many people do) sit on the floor, which is especially a problem for the elderly, etc.
  • The security lineup tends to be very long, since all of a sudden an entire plane-full of people tries to pass through a checkpoint with very limited equipment (i.e. usually just 1 x-ray machine)
  • Once inside the area, it's essentially an entire plane-full of people in a small area with no way to spread out, so there's always a shortage of seats
  • There's no way to buy e.g. a bottle of water (not to mention duty-free alcohol) in the secure area of the airport and bring it onto the plane, something that is generally allowed in typical airports
  • Security screening personnel must roam around the airport from gate to gate

I can think of only one advantage of this system: Arriving flights from non-Schengen countries (whose passengers must be re-screened for security) can just let people out of the plane through the gate - there's no need to "route" them through the secure area to a non-secure area, since everything is essentially a non-secure area. But surely this could have been solved at the airport design stage, as it is solved in many airports worldwide? Is this just a design oversight or a conscious decision? Are there other reasons to use such a system that I'm not thinking of? Is this typical in other European airports?

pnuts
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Eugene O
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    The third point isn't completely accurate, I was able to wait inside the gate before the security checkpoint opens, they just ask everyone to leave to start preparing. – Relaxed Aug 05 '14 at 21:43
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    Also you can buy duty-free alcohol and take it through security as long as it's correctly sealed. As for water I recall a lot of airports with this setup have water fountains / vending machines after security (this may not be true for Amsterdam, I can't remember). – SpaceDog Aug 06 '14 at 01:57
  • @SpaceDog in Amsterdam the waiting time between security and boarding (because of the checks at the gate) are so short it's never an issue that there's no way to get drinking water (and in an emergency of course staff could always get some from outside the secure area in minutes). – jwenting Aug 06 '14 at 07:38
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    "Is this typical in other European airports?" Not that I know of. I've see ones with centralized security for all (eg. Madrid-Barajas), as well as per-gate security for all (eg. Zurich). – vartec Aug 06 '14 at 10:50
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    ZRH's not all per-gate: the entire non-Schengen satellite (terminal E) has central security on entry. – lambshaanxy Aug 06 '14 at 12:03
  • Technically, in spite of the website, AMS isn't entirely per-gate for non-Schengen flights either. Pier H (low-cost flights) has security somewhere between the waiting area shared with pier G and the corridor shared with the M-gates (low-costs flights to the Schengen area, actually the same gates, separated by a glass wall from the flow of non-Schengen passengers). – Relaxed Aug 07 '14 at 00:09
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    Note that Schiphol is apparently switching to centralized security so the airport's management seems to share your assessment of the cost-benefit trade-off. – Relaxed Aug 07 '14 at 00:12
  • I would say that much of these security checkpoints' activity is essentially security theater rather than actually preventing terrorist attacks, since one can easily just set off an explosive charge at the security checkpoint, or hold someone at knife-point/gunpoint then and there. Sure, it's not as dramatic is hijacking an airplane but it has the benefit of causing a shutdown of an entire airport rather than a single flight somewhere over the ocean. So in that sense it doesn't really matter where you put them. – einpoklum Mar 08 '17 at 12:53
  • Somewhere, I think it was Turkey, I went through screening near the airport entrance and again at the gate. – WGroleau Apr 12 '17 at 02:41

2 Answers2

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Screening at the gate is done at a number of other major airports, including Singapore Changi, Kuala Lumpur International, etc. And it has one massive advantage from the airport operator's point of view: you don't need to separate arrivals and departures.

This means that instead of essentially duplicating all routes to the aircraft (one for passengers boarding, one for passengers disembarking) and maintaining security to ensure that nobody accidentally or intentionally slips from one route to the other, you can basically build one floor less. Given how large the average airport building is, this is a pretty significant saving. As an additional bonus, arriving passengers get to shop at all the same restaurants, bars, duty-free shops as departing passengers, which means the airport makes more money and doesn't need to duplicate the duty-free shops either. Finally, as you note, this means you don't need the special "transit screening" that you do need at split-level airports to allow passengers to move from the unsecured arrivals to the secured departures areas.

Also, handling security at each gate may seem a bit inefficient, but it actually provides massive maximum capacity advantages. If your screening is centralized, and you've got a lot of flights leaving at once, then your central security may get really badly backed up. I've waited in 500m+ security lines in Heathrow, which has central security and thus has to funnel everybody through that single point of failure, where they wait fuming, tweeting about how much they hate LHR. In Changi, problem solved: you just let people into departures, where they can shop, eat, drink and be merry, and screen them a few hundred a time at the gates.

As for disadvantages, the cost to the airport of maintaining all the redundant screening areas isn't that huge, since the main cost of security is manpower, and each screening area is unattended when there are no flights using that particular gate. I can't recall exactly how AMS is set up, but in SIN each set of security equipment in T1/T2 is typically shared by a gate or two, with T3 having semi-central security checkpoints each covering half a dozen gates or so.

lambshaanxy
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    Good answer, didn't think of not having to build a whole second level. Also, I don't think it's true for Amsterdam, but in some places it may allow them to do different levels of screening depending on the destination of the flight as well. – SpaceDog Aug 06 '14 at 01:58
  • Singapore does at-gate screening of some incoming flights, although this seems semi-random: I used to run into this often (but not always) when returning from Jakarta. – lambshaanxy Aug 06 '14 at 03:32
  • AMS has separate machines at each gate, but they are semi-mobile and could be moved if needed, reducing the number of needed spares. The cost also isn't that high, as if you centralise it all you'd need a lot of machines in the one or two lanes that you keep in order to handle the created bottleneck. – jwenting Aug 06 '14 at 07:41
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    @jpatokal many airports do that, mostly spot checks on flights arriving from destinations known to have a high incidence of contraband on board. Had the same arriving from Jakarta at Amsterdam. Drug sniffing dogs at the gate, and barriers (lines of airport police and moving screens) separating the passengers from the rest of the airport all the way through customs. First time I saw that at Amsterdam, rather impressive. – jwenting Aug 06 '14 at 07:43
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    This doesn't explain why the difference for Schengen vs non-Schengen. Especially given that passport control is centralized. – vartec Aug 06 '14 at 10:52
  • @vartec Probably because they don't trust security at non-Schengen destinations, and want to screen them again before they get on their next flight? Doesn't really explain why they didn't just opt for transit screening though. – lambshaanxy Aug 06 '14 at 11:58
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    Amsterdam has several different screening systems in use. For quite a few gates there is security as soon as you come into airside of the airport, with or without passport control in different areas. Secondly there are groups of gates that have security for 2 to 10 gates, after shopping but with common areas behind the checks. And lastly there are gates where the checks are just before boarding and there is nothing but the walk into the plane after the check. They had gone to centralized security only but some countries stand on gate checks for the flights to their country. – Willeke Apr 27 '15 at 12:58
  • Another airport that is set up this way is Berlin Tegel. I believe the Munich airport is also similar. In the past, the Pan Am terminal in JFK had a somewhat similar setup, although Delta changed it when they took over. Today, this terminal is demolished, of course. One issue this setup creates is that there is no secure connection for transiting passengers, meaning that even transferring passengers have to go through security. – Kevin Keane Jun 06 '15 at 22:05
  • Maybe I'm dumb but... why would you need to separate arrivals and departures in the first place? Prague Airport's Schengen Terminal has central security and doesn't separate arrivals from departures, so it's possible. – JonathanReez Oct 18 '16 at 08:33
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    @JonathanReez Arrivals from Schengen don't need immigration or customs processing. This is not the case for most international arrivals. – lambshaanxy Oct 18 '16 at 09:35
  • Prague's non-Schengen Terminal does have security at each gate, but you can transfer between flights without going through immigration and customs - an X-ray check is all that's needed. So why couldn't the non-Schengen terminal have centralized security as well? – JonathanReez Oct 18 '16 at 09:46
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    I don't see the causal relation between at-gate screening and separating arrivals from departures. Copenhagen Airport has centralized security screening and centralized immigration checks, and still seems to work fine without separating arriving and departing passengers. (I think it is similar at many other airports, but this is the example I'm 100% sure of). – hmakholm left over Monica Nov 19 '16 at 13:42
  • "why would you need to separate arrivals and departures in the first place?" because you do not trust the security in all the airports the passengers are arriving from to do as good a job as your own security. Schengen terminals only handle flights from trusted places, so there is no need to re-screen. – Peter Green Nov 25 '19 at 14:12
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It has several benefits:

  • prevents ancillary staff like catering and shop workers from entering the secure area
  • stops large quantities of goods used by catering and shops, etc. from having to be screened (not to mention that catering staff will have knives and so on to do their work).
  • allows non-travellers to use the facilities, e.g. when seeing off their friends
  • in a small airport handling short-haul aircraft, it's often actually quicker for passengers

I think the downsides for airports are that expensive screening kit needs to be duplicated and it possibly needs more staff.

Rich
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