NOS News•today, 10:23
About 30 percent of flights at Schiphol can be canceled without much damage to the economy. This is what two researchers say in a new study commissioned by Natuur & Milieu.
Researchers Eric Pels from VU Amsterdam and Paul Peeters from Breda University of Applied Sciences looked at which flights at Schiphol generate the least revenue and have the most environmental costs. This concerns, for example, flights on which many transfer passengers travel. They change to another flight at Schiphol and spend at most money on food, drinks and souvenirs in the Netherlands.
“That’s a tenner’s work,” says Paul Peeters NOS Radio 1 News. “These flights are very important for KLM’s revenue model, but their importance for the Dutch economy is much smaller.”
Schiphol is important for the business climate, “but that is relevant for a limited number of sectors”.
Densely populated
Shrinkage of Schiphol is a current theme. The government has wanted fewer flights from the airport for some time and local residents recently won a lawsuit, which makes shrinkage seem inevitable.
“The government started with a policy to allow Schiphol to grow when the airport was still a lot smaller. If you keep growing, extra flights yield fewer and fewer extras. We are in that situation now. At the same time, Schiphol is located in an extremely densely populated area and Many people suffer from it.”
The government plans to reduce the number of flights at Schiphol by about 10 percent, to a maximum of 452,500 per year. A proposal is currently before the European Commission for approval.
Tags: flights Schiphol yields Netherlands
