Large Dutch airports processed over 76 million travelers last year

Over 76.2 million people traveled through the five large airports in the Netherlands last year, Statistics Netherlands announced on Wednesday. That is a significant increase compared to 2016, when 70.3 million travelers arrived or departed at Schiphol, Eindhoven Airport, Rotterdam The Hague Airport, Groningen Airport Eelde and Maastricht Aachen Airport.

Four out of the five large airports handled more passengers in each quarter of 2017 than a year earlier. Only Maastricht Aachen saw a decline.

Schiphol Airport handled the vast majority of these passengers, and again broke its passenger record. Last year 68.4 million passengers traveled through the Amsterdam airport, an increase of 7.7 percent compared to 2016. Schiphol has seen an uninterrupted increase in the number of passengers since 2009. The number of takeoffs and landings at Schiphol increased by 3.7 percent last year to 497 thousand flight movements. That is just below the 500 thousand flight movements a year that the airport has to keep to until 2020.

The fact that the number of passengers increased more than the flight movements at Schiphol, can be attributed to larger planes, and planes being filled to capacity more often.

Eindhoven Airport, the second largest airport in the Netherlands, processed nearly 5.7 million passengers, an increase of 19 percent compared to 2016. Over 1.7 million people traveled through Rotterdam The Hague airport, an increase of 5.4 percent.

Groningen Eelde Airport saw the biggest increase and handled 32 percent more passengers. The number of passengers that traveled through Maastricht Aachen airport decreased by 5.1 percent. Though freight traffic at Maastricht Aachen increased by a massive 43 percent, to 87 thousand tons of goods transported in 2017. These two airports combined only handle 0.5 percent of all plane travelers in the country.