Which flight is more important for the Netherlands: Amsterdam-Málaga or Amsterdam-Manchester? A flight with holidaymakers to the Spanish sun or a flight with mainly business travelers to the United Kingdom’s second city?
Or: what is more important, a flight to Berlin six times a day or to Bonaire once a day?
These are essential questions for the future of Schiphol. If Amsterdam airport has to shrink – that depends on ongoing legal procedures – which flights will have to disappear? Which destinations can be canceled if Schiphol has to reduce from a maximum of 500,000 flights per year to possibly 440,000 or 400,000?
The Dutch organization Nature & Environment has an answer to that question. Cancel flights with many transfers, who only use Schiphol for a transfer from one flight to another. Nature and environmentalists published research into Schiphol’s destination network on Tuesday.
“The Netherlands can cancel up to one in three flights without direct costs to the Dutch economy,” aviation experts Eric Pels (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and Paul Peeters (Breda University) said in the study they conducted on behalf of Natuur & Milieu.
“A long-distance flight with a high percentage of transfers has a small return [voor Nederland], but causes costs for society through climate damage and noise pollution,” the researchers said. Last year, a third of the 62 million passengers at Schiphol were transfers; in February 2024 this was even 40 percent.
Distorted picture
The Dutch government now has a method to measure the (economic) value of the network of almost three hundred destinations that you can reach directly from Schiphol. But there are many things wrong with that, according to Pels and Peeters. According to them, this measuring method gives a distorted picture of the importance of the current aviation network for the prosperity of the Netherlands.
According to research by Nature & Environment, this method, the Network Quality Policy Framework, which the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management introduced in 2022, does not take enough account of the type of travelers and the environmental effects of a flight. For example, business travelers would be favored over tourists, and aviation growth would by definition be valued as positive.
Pels and Peeters believe that more attention should be paid to aspects of ‘broad prosperity’ rather than primarily to the interests of airlines. “Choose a measurement method that provides insight into what a flight brings us and which destinations we as a country really need.”
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Powerless
The big question, however, is: what then? What can you do with a ranking of valuable destinations from Schiphol? Very little, as has become apparent in recent years.
The Dutch government is currently powerless in determining which destinations should be served from Schiphol. That’s entirely up to the airlines.
In a memorandum accompanying the Network Quality Policy Framework in December 2021, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management stated: “Under current EU regulations, the government has no instruments to manage the destination network.”
So if the ministry considers Amsterdam-Málaga more important for the Netherlands – for tourists to and from their well-deserved summer holidays – but KLM prefers the connection with Manchester, they will fly to Manchester. A flight from Manchester to Amsterdam is interesting for KLM, because the passengers fill part of a transatlantic flight to the US, for example. And intercontinental flights make an airline more money.
In this discussion, KLM always emphasizes the public importance of Schiphol’s so-called ‘hub’ network. It is a major advantage for Dutch travelers that they can fly directly from Amsterdam to almost three hundred destinations, without transfers.
Serious damage
The shrinkage of Schiphol, Air France-KLM chairman Ben Smith regularly states, is causing serious damage to the strong position that Schiphol and KLM have built up in recent decades. Amsterdam airport has been at the top of the lists of the world’s best connected airports for years.
In 2021, the Dutch slot coordinator ACNL, which distributes take-off and landing rights at Schiphol, Eindhoven and Rotterdam-The Hague Airport, tried to steer the type of destinations. However, ACNL lost a lawsuit filed by the international aviation industry organization IATA, together with KLM, Transavia and TUI. ACNL had to tear up its ‘destination list’ and distribute the slots solely on the basis of historical usage rights.
The Netherlands is awaiting the revision of the European directive for the allocation of take-off and landing rights at airports. The European Commission was supposed to approve this at the end of 2023, but that has been postponed. A new slot directive could make it possible for EU member states to have more guidance in the distribution of take-off and landing rights.
In the meantime, the legal battle over the shrinkage of Schiphol shows how little control the government seems to have over aviation. In mid-2022, Minister Mark Harbers (Infrastructure and Water Management, VVD) determined that Schiphol had to shrink due to noise pollution. Nothing has come of this yet.
A new step will follow on Friday; the Advocate General will then give his advice to the Supreme Court in the cassation case by KLM and other airlines against a reduction in the maximum number of flights at Schiphol. Often, but not always, the Supreme Court follows the advice of the Advocate General.
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Tags: Nature Environment cancel flights transfers Schiphol yield Netherlands
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