Traveling from Amsterdam to Portland, Oregon. The transit time is 2 hours. Have opted for wheelchair assistance. Is this sufficient time?

Question

I am travelling from Mumbai to Amsterdam and have a connecting flight from AMS to Portland, USA. The transit time is only 2 hours. What are the procedures in the AMS airport before reaching the departure gate? I have opted for wheelchair assistance. Where will they be waiting? Will they take me to the gate and other security procedures?

Answer 1

It’s difficult to say. If you need a wheelchair assist from your airplane seat, then they have to wait until everyone has deplaned before they can bring the aisle chair down to get you. That can be a good thirty minutes.

Even worse, my wheelchair using friends have often been forgotten by the airport staff, so the cabin crew has to call repeatedly to get a chair. If their chair was gate-checked then it takes half an hour to get the chair off the plane and to the jetway — assuming the baggage apes haven’t broken it.

So I would calculate an hour to get off the plane and to find a gate agent with a push chair.

Then there is immigration. You don’t note if you’re an EU citizen but if you aren’t, you might want to give yourself half an hour.

As your next flight is an international one, they may start boarding 45 minutes before the listed time. This gives you only 1 hour and 15 minutes of transit time between your arrival and departure gate.

Personally, I’d recommend a minimum of three hours if I know I’m going to need assistance. That gives enough time for multiple things to go wrong. And if everything goes right, there are yummy things to eat and some shopping in the terminal that you can do.

Of course, I get the stink eye from my spouse many times as we end up spending a lot of time looking up at the ceilings of airports in boredom due to my anxiety about these things.

But given your scenario of someone who can walk off the plane to the gate themselves, two hours should work.