Stormy weather cancels many flights at Schiphol; Overnight outage at air traffic control
Dozens of flights to and from Schiphol Airport were canceled on Tuesday morning due to stormy weather. Many flights were also canceled overnight due to an outage at air traffic control. The problem has been resolved.
On its website, Schiphol reported 20 canceled and a handful of delayed departures, mostly in the morning. Arriving flights are much more affected. Schiphol reported 42 canceled arrivals and 71 arriving flights with delays. Most of the impacted flights are morning flights, and many of the delays are only a few minutes.
A spokesperson for the airport told NU.nl that it expects strong winds to cause problems all morning. The airport expects the wind to die down enough to stop disrupting air traffic by noon. The KNMI has a code yellow warning for strong winds with gusts up to 85 kilometers per hour in place for Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland, and Zeeland until mid-morning.
A disruption at Air Traffic Control Netherlands also resulted in canceled flights overnight. “Very limited” air traffic was possible above the Netherlands, and no flights could land or take off at Dutch airports from 11:00 p.m. until after 1:30 a.m. when the issue was resolved. Some flights to the Netherlands had to divert to airports in Belgium and France, and some passengers were left stranded at the airport, a Schiphol spokesperson told ANP.
KLM canceled 16 flights overnight due to the air traffic control issue. Four flights were diverted - two landed in Brussels, one in Ostend, and one in Paris. Due to this malfunction, several KLM planes aren’t where they should be on Tuesday morning. The Dutch airline, therefore, had to cancel 13 flights for Tuesday morning, a spokesperson told NU.nl.
Strong winds and stormy weather also resulted in dozens of canceled flights on Monday.