No further peak-time growth possible for Schiphol: report

In the coming years Schiphol will remain very crowded during the morning and evening peak-times. If the airport wants to grow further, it will have to do so outside peak times, because no more takeoffs and landings can be fit into the peak times, various Dutch news sources including Haarlems Dagblad, Noordhollands Dagblad and RTL Nieuws report.

Transferring holiday flights to Lelystad airport will not fix this problem, the newspapers write based on several studies carried out on behalf of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management.

Schiphol is limited to 500 thousand takeoffs and landings per year until the end of 2020. Air traffic control is confident that it can handle up to 540 thousand flight movements per year. That number of flight movements is only possible if more than 4 runways are used simultaneously, which is in conflict with agreements made with local residents' groups, according to RTL.

But that does not mean that Schiphol can't grow further. There is no maximum set on the number of passengers traveling through the airport. As larger and larger planes are used, the number of passengers traveling through Schiphol keeps increasing. Last year the airport handled 68.4 million passengers.