Night flights ban at Schiphol will cause more flights, noise overday: Slot coordinator

Closing Schiphol at night will lead to more flights and noise pollution during the day, slot coordinator Hugo Thomassen of Airport Coordination Netherlands told the Telegraaf.

International rules stipulate that giving up a night flight creates five times more “noise space” at the edges of the day and ten times as much during the day, according to Thomassen. It was previously agreed that half of the “noise gain” should go to aviation itself. That means that an airline could gain multiple additional day-time flights for each of its night flights.

A complete night closure will result in “noise space” for 150,000 takeoffs and landings during the day - a growth of about 30 percent based on Schiphol’s capacity. And that while the government is fighting to reduce the flight movements at the airport.

“The departed interim director [Ruud] Sondag has created a huge problem with his sudden proposal for night closure,” an insider at the airport told the Telegraaf. “Because the airport needs to move towards shrinkage, but this will actually stimulate growth.”

Dutch parliament recently approved the idea of closing Schiphol at night, but the European Commission still has to sign off on it. The government’s plans to shrink Schiphol from 500,000 to 440,000 flight movements per year is already on the Commission's table, but the night closure is not part of that package of measures. The Ministry of Infrastructure is conducting an impact analysis for the night closure and doesn’t expect to submit it to Brussels before the end of the year.