Transavia hit hard by Schiphol's next steps to ban night flights

Schiphol is taking the next steps to ban night flights, with the aim of implementing the ban six months ahead of schedule, sources told De Telegraaf. No more night flights will be a particularly harsh blow for KLM subsidiary Transavia.

On Friday, Schiphol informed cargo companies about its intention to close the airport completely to arriving flights between midnight and 5:00 a.m. and departing flights between midnight and 6:00 a.m. It plans to implement this closure on April 1 next year, six months ahead of its initial plans to ban night flights in the winter of 2025/2026.

Using unpopular timeslots in the middle of the night is part of how Transavia keeps tickets to its holiday destinations low. Transavia needs the night, Marnix Fruitema of Barin, the umbrella organization for aviation, told the newspaper. “Travelers will have to leave at night from Dusseldorf or Brussels because other Dutch airports are also closed.”

“Outgoing Minister [Mark Harbers of Infrastructure] and Schiphol are only pushing in one direction,” Fruitema said. “We understand that something has to be done at night, but this measure is drastic for freight traffic and especially for Transavia.

The night flight ban will also impact other holiday flyers. Tour operator TUI told Luchtvaartnieuws that the ban would have severe consequences for the efficient execution of its flight schedule.

Schiphol presented its plans to ban overnight flights and passenger jets last April. Harbers formally announced last September that the Cabinet wanted annual overnight flight movements to be reduced from 32,000 to 28,700 starting this coming November. Those targets for overnight flights were part of a plan to reduce the number of annual permitted flights from 500,000 to 452,500 from November.

KLM already announced that it would stop operating flights at Schiphol during the overnight hours from the end of this month