schiphol

As a national one-day public transit strike was almost halfway finished in the Netherlands, traffic was already beginning to pile up on highways in the Netherlands from 3 p.m. on Tuesday. Drivers jammed up nearly 450 kilometers of highways by 4:45 p.m., up from roughly 300 kilometers of traffic jams 40 minutes earlier, according to travelers' association ANWB.

A total of 82 flights at Schiphol airport were canceled on Tuesday due to a nationwide public transit strike. "Travelers have to check with their airline if their flight is affected", a spokesperson for the airport said to NH Nieuws. 

While the nationwide public transit strike is annoying to most people, taxi drivers are smiling all the way. "Such a public transit strike can happen more often, according to us", a taxi driver at Amsterdam Central Station said to NOS. He expects a busy day. "We will see how many people we can help today."

A nationwide public transit strike will cause major traffic problems on Tuesday, Dutch travelers' association ANWB warns. The strike is expected to bring almost all public transit across the Netherlands to a halt.

Trains must continue to take passengers to and from Schiphol Airport during a national public transit strike scheduled for Tuesday, a court in the Netherlands ruled on Sunday. Though buses, subways and trams will grind to a halt, the transportation unions were ordered to ensure that at least four trains per hour will run each way between Amsterdam Centraal and Schiphol.

A KLM Boeing 737 landed at Schiphol airport with a broken engine on Sunday morning. The plane full of passengers came from Portugal. The cause of the broken engine is still unknown and is being investigated, a KLM spokesperson said to the Telegraaf.

"We are figuring it out", the spokesperson said to the newspaper. It is possible that a bird ended up in the engine, causing a fire. "The passengers were not in danger and there was no panic on board. The aircraft landed safely", according to the spokesperson.

A majority in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, want the number of night flights at Schiphol to be reduced. Some parties even want night flights to be scrapped completely. The Kamer will discuss aviation with Minister Cora van Nieuwenhuizen of Infrastructure and Water Management on Thursday, RTL Nieuws reports.

Jet Airways is canceling more flights to and from Amsterdam. All flights between Schiphol and India scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are canceled, the financially troubled Indian airline confirmed to NL Times in a statement. 

Jet Airways flies between Amsterdam and Bengaluru (commonly known as "Bangalore"), Delhi, and Mumbai in India, and also Toronto, Canada. The airline suspended the route between Amsterdam and Toronto on April 11th "until further notice", a Jet Airways spokesperson said to NL Times by email.

A flight attendant was stopped by police at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam on Tuesday under suspicion of consuming too much alcohol. The 26-year-old purser was already on board a foreign airline’s plane when he was confronted by authorities, police said.

Police subjected the suspect to a breath analysis, which came back with a reading of 260 micrograms per liter of breath. Authorities converted this to the stricter blood alcohol concentration of .06, which is three times the legal limit for aircraft personnel.

A 24-year-old man from The Hague was arrested at Schiphol airport last week Wednesday. He is suspected of fighting in the Syrian civil war on the side of the Kurdish YPG militia, the Public Prosecutor said in a statement.

ProRail wants to run automated light rail trains between Schiphol and Amsterdam with extreme high frequencies - 30 times per hour. To achieve that, railways need to be cleared for this type of train. ProRail director Pier Eringa believes that these automated trains, which he compares to a city rail line like the S-Bahn in Berlin, will be needed to accommodate the increase in passengers between the Netherlands' capital and its main airport, Het Parool reports.