Schiphol means ship grave. Before 1852, the Haarlemmermeer was a real lake - a shallow, dangerous body of water southwest of Amsterdam where sudden storms claimed ships with such regularity that the locals had a name for the place where the wreckage piled up. The Dutch drained it. They turned the lake bed into a polder, and on its flat reclaimed surface they eventually built one of the busiest airports in the world. The fort that gave Schiphol its name was part of the Defense Line of Amsterdam; the field that became the airport opened on 16 September 1916 as a military airbase, a few barracks and an open expanse of grass. A century later, the polder still drains beneath the runways and a Boeing 777 lifts off where the wind once tore the sails off a herring boat.
KLM was founded on 7 October 1919 by Albert Plesman. It is the oldest airline in the world still operating under its original name, though it suspended operations in Europe during the Second World War while continuing to fly in the Dutch Antilles. The first KLM flight took off from Croydon Airport in London on 17 May 1920, headed for Amsterdam, carrying two British journalists and a stack of newspapers. By 1926 the airline was serving Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Brussels, Paris, London, Bremen, Copenhagen and Malmö. Intercontinental routes to the Netherlands East Indies began in 1929 - for several years the longest scheduled air route in the world. On 1 November 1958 KLM opened a trans-polar route from Amsterdam via Anchorage to Tokyo. The flight crew was equipped with a winter survival kit that included an AR-10 carbine, just in case the aircraft was forced down on the polar ice and the survivors had to deal with polar bears.
Schiphol uses a one-terminal concept: all check-in halls, all gates, and all baggage claim sit under a single roof. The downside is distance. A connection from Concourse B at one end to Concourse M at the other can be a fifteen-minute walk plus immigration if the transfer crosses the Schengen boundary. The terminal is divided into four lounges. Lounge 1 (B, C and parts of D) serves Schengen flights. Lounge 2 (E and other D gates) and Lounge 3 (F, G, H) handle non-Schengen. Lounge 4 is separated entirely - a low-cost-carrier concourse called M, where you cannot reach the rest of the terminal once past security without exiting and re-entering. KLM and Transavia use almost everything except H and M. Schiphol Plaza, the airport's central shopping zone, sits before security on the ground floor, accessible to both passengers and locals.
The cheapest and usually fastest way to reach Amsterdam from Schiphol is the train. The underground station beneath the terminal has six tracks: northbound services on tracks 1 and 2 head to Amsterdam Zuid or Centraal and continue on to Utrecht, Lelystad, Nijmegen or Groningen. Tracks 5 and 6 carry trains south to The Hague, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Brussels and Paris. The Eurostar service requires advance booking. Standard NS tickets accept any contactless bank card via the OVpay system at the gates. The Amsterdam Travel Ticket bundles return rail to the city with unlimited tram, metro and bus use - a small math exercise that usually saves money for stays longer than a single transfer. Buses leave from outside the terminal building, with frequent service to Amsterdam Bijlmer.
The local Wikivoyage advice is direct: do not use a taxi unless there is no alternative. Schiphol taxis charge a roughly 7.50-euro minimum for the first two kilometers, then run the meter aggressively. A ride to Leidseplein in central Amsterdam runs 40 to 50 euros and takes 25 minutes if traffic cooperates and twice that if it doesn't. The flat fee in the other direction - city to airport - is 35 euros. Avoid the shouting drivers in the bus station entirely; they are not licensed and they will overcharge. UberBlack is available for a fixed 60 euros. Staxi offers booked transfers. The A4 motorway connects directly to Amsterdam's ring road A10 in about ten minutes by car, so renting is a reasonable option for travelers heading beyond the city.
The most confusing thing about Schiphol is the Schengen boundary. Because the Netherlands is part of the Schengen area, passport control happens between Schengen and non-Schengen flights rather than at every international flight. If you connect Spain to Sweden, you stay airside without security or immigration. If you arrive from the United States and connect to Italy, you skip security but cross immigration into Schengen. If you arrive from the United States and connect to Morocco, you do neither - you stay in the non-Schengen transit zone. If you arrive from most of Asia or Africa and connect anywhere, you go through security again. The signage helps. The terminal redesign that put security at the lounges rather than the gates was meant to simplify all of this; in practice it still takes a few seconds at each junction to figure out which line is yours. Allow ninety minutes for a Schengen-to-non-Schengen connection in the morning rush.
Schiphol Airport (EHAM) sits at 52.32 N, 4.76 E in Haarlemmermeer, southwest of central Amsterdam. The airport occupies the bed of the former Haarlemmermeer lake, drained in the 1850s. Six parallel-and-crossing runways span the field, with the 18R/36L Polderbaan extended out to the northwest of the main complex. The terminal is the dense central structure between runways. EHAM is among the busiest passenger airports in Europe, ranking fourth by passenger volume. The Singelgracht of central Amsterdam lies 12 km to the northeast; the North Sea coast at IJmuiden is 18 km to the north. Standard arrivals route via Sugol from the east or Spijkerboor from the south.