Researchers say Schiphol can cut more flights without seriously impacting business world

The number of flights via Schiphol Airport can be reduced significantly without it affecting the Dutch business climate, researchers Walter Manshanden and Hans Buursma wrote in the economic magazine ESB. They think that the maximum number of annual flight movements can actually be reduced to 345,000 instead of the 452,500 that the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management is aiming to implement.

Last year, nearly 474,000 flights either departed from the European Union's second largest airport, or arrived at the facility just outside of Amsterdam. That was an increase of 7 percent to 2023, but still lower than the pre-pandemic peak of nearly 500,000 flights in 2019. That year, the Cabinet gave the aiport permission to maximize flight movements over the objections of area residents concerned about noise and pollution.

Manshanden and Buursma stated in their article this week that business air traffic has reduced significantly since 2019, the year that the ministry's current leadership used in its calculations to determine capacity reductions. The share of business travelers has dropped from 32 percent to 19 percent, as business travel has not recovered since the coronavirus pandemic.

The researchers claim that is due to people finding more ways to meet digitally since the start of the pandemic, which led to strict limitations on international travel. As a result, fewer flights are needed to keep the business climate in tact. In addition, the researchers feel that the ministry were very broad with their calculations. A large number of cities that could not be reached directly in 2019 were also used in the calculations, they said.

Manshanden and Buursma feel this is unnecessary when it comes to maintaining the business climate. “Doing this increases the number of flights significantly,” they wrote. The ministry also made “debatable methodological choices which result in the number of flights being much higher than if they used more plausible assumptions.”

They also noted that the urban area used to help determine the necessary number of flights included multinational businesses in Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht. However, "the resulting number of flights for Schiphol is not reduced by the 20,000 flight movements that happen at Rotterdam The Hague Airport."

The researchers calculated 345,000 flights via Schiphol using the ministry’s calculation method. “And this is without taking into account the possible reduction in demand for flights in the business world due to increased digital meeting possibilities,” said the researchers.