Schiphol canceling one in three flights won't impact Dutch economy much: study

Schiphol Airport canceling one in three flights won’t impact the Dutch economy much, according to a study by aviation experts Eric Pels of VU University Amsterdam and Paul Peeters of Breda University of Applied Sciences, commissioned by Natuur & Milieu. In fact, if the economic benefits and social costs are fairly weighed against each other, fewer flights at the Amsterdam airport may even result in economic growth, the researchers said, Trouw reports.

“Schiphol is partly so big because it is one of the cheapest in Europe,” Peeters said. “When you downsize, there is a scarcity of places for planes, and that means you can charge higher prices and grow economically while the number of flights decreases.”

According to the researchers, Schiphol’s contribution to the Dutch economy is often overexaggerated. That has to do with the large number of transfer passengers - travelers who use the airport exclusively to get from one plane to another. “Transfer passengers order a few cups of coffee and maybe something to eat, and then they leave again. If those people had stayed in the Netherlands, it would be a different story. Then, you quickly talk about hundreds of euros per person that would flow directly into the Dutch economy.” But two cups of coffee and a sandwich don’t yield much.

The social costs of a busy airport - climate damage and healthcare costs resulting from noise pollution - are often not included in the economic estimates, the researchers added. According to Peeters and Pels, on balance, 30 percent of all flights cost society more than they yield if the costs of climate damage alone are taken into account, too.

“The picture is starting to tilt,” Peeters said. “Twenty years ago, Schiphol’s growth had a positive effect on the Dutch economy. The airport is now so large that further growth has a negative effect.”

This is not the first report stating that Schiphol’s importance to the economy may be overstated. A recent study by CE Delft and others showed that environmental and noise measures, and downsizing at Schiphol would be “much better for broad prosperity” than the current policy of protecting the airport’s transfer model. KLM - one of the parties that commissioned the study - initially tried to repress its results because they would have a negative impact on the airline’s revenue model.