The Netherlands squeezes Schiphol by cutting thousands of flights
The Netherlands squeezes Schiphol by cutting thousands of flights
The Dutch government is cutting flights to lessen noise pollution, but airlines and analysts warn of negative impacts.
The claim that this is bad for the Dutch economy is nonsense. A huge number (probably most) Schiphol passengers are using the airport for a layover. They aren't staying in the Netherlands, they're not spending money there (at most some coffee or something but it's duty free), and it doesn't create many well paying jobs for people living in the Netherlands.
Most of the money Schiphol brings in stays in the pockets of people who are already rich and the jobs it creates are mostly poorly paid (like luggage handlers, staff at shops, etc). There's plenty of open vacancies for jobs like that already, we don't need an extremely loud and polluting industry for that.
Schiphol is too big as it is. The Netherlands is a small country and it doesn't need such a huge airport. Why does Amsterdam need to be some hub for Europeans to fly across the world or to connect the Americas and Asia? Why must the Netherlands be even more polluted to make traveling slightly more convenient mostly for foreigners?
This is one only part of the corrective actions needed, the other half is improving regional mobility with trains to compensate:
The Dutch parliament is currently doing everything they can to help eurostar's monopoly on travel to the UK by trying to solve the immigration and customs issue in Amsterdam, but they are doing nothing or not enough for all the other less flashy rail travel initiatives. In clockwise order:
- There is no fast international connection north possible from Amsterdam towards Bremen due to missing track alignments.
- Amsterdam to Arnhem and beyond is being tripled, but mainly for freight. There wasn't even a speed increase to 200+ and I didn't hear much about increasing passenger train frequency.
- Eindhoven - Venlo - Dusseldorf is missing a continuous IC connection and the German side of the Venlo tracks need doubling
- A similar direct train to Köln is needed, either from Eindhoven or Maastricht
- Many more ICE trains are needed that travel deeper into Germany, like Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Basel and beyond. They shouldn't all leave from Amsterdam.
- Maastricht to Liege and Aachen should be high frequency IC routes, ideally starting further north in the Netherlands
- Reopen the Roermond-Antwerp alignment for passenger rail
- Continuing from Venlo to Eindhoven in the other direction, new track alignment is needed to connect Dusseldorf to Antwerp, Gent, Kortrijk, and Lille as a new mid to high speed corridor crossing 4 countries.
- More competition in service providers on HSL zuid, why is Thalys allowed the monopoly.
- The through traffic from Netherlands to France should not need to spend so long in Belgium, but that is being improved.
If air travel is then still competitive and bottlenecked on slot capacity, connecting Eindhoven Airport by rail and moving more flights there could help.
You seem to know your stuff so I have a question, I know that they're currently working on the Friesenbrücke, the bridge between Weener (DE) and Leer (DE) which was destroyed a few years ago due to an accident. Arriva stated that they want to invest in a Groningen - Bremen line too, which hypothetically should make a Amsterdam - Bremen or even Amsterdam - Berlin line. Do you think that we'll see lines like that, perhaps even high speed, in the future?
I'm not an expert, but with the current implementation of EU policy I don't think we will see improvements in rail connections that aren't freight or the high speed core soon unfortunately.
Over the summer, Belgium’s Mobility Minister Georges Gilkinet proposed a ban on flights between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., saying “everyone has the right to rest and quiet nights."
I used to live directly under an airport approach path.
I did not care about aircraft at night. I'm not going to say that there isn't anyone else out there that does, but you adapt to normal sounds in your environment. Airplanes didn't wake me up. I'm asleep. If there's one time I want a given aircraft coming through, it's when I'm asleep.
What I did find obnoxious was aircraft coming in during the day and -- for a few seconds -- drowning out whatever was going on. Today, TiVO and streaming media with pausing and all that exists, and helps mitigate that to some degree, but at the time, if you missed a critical bit of television dialog, you missed it. And while most of the time we'd just suspend a conversation for a few seconds, and it became automatic, every now and then something would happen that didn't deal well with interruption, and it would happen just when an aircraft was landing.
If they aren't flying airplanes in during the night, that presumably means that there's gonna be more demand for airport capacity during the day.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Dutch authorities on Thursday confirmed they will slash the number of flights at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport in a bid to cut noise pollution — a step that has airlines suing and calling for Washington to retaliate.
John Strickland, a director with aviation specialists JLS Consulting, called the decision “disastrous” for KLM, other airlines and the Dutch economy.
“Handicapping the vast economic and social benefits which aviation brings, particularly for a trade dependent country like the Netherlands is not the right solution.”
“We believe the U.S. and Dutch Governments have an obligation under our historic Open Skies Agreement to ensure that JetBlue is granted continued access at Amsterdam’s only viable airport,” the airline said in an emailed statement.
Last year, the Belgian federal government paid €25 million in penalties for noise pollution caused by air traffic around Zaventem airport in Brussels.
Over the summer, Belgium’s Mobility Minister Georges Gilkinet proposed a ban on flights between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., saying “everyone has the right to rest and quiet nights."
The original article contains 605 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
What a surprising reslonse from KLM, Smith, etc /s
Last two times I flew with KLM (one of which last week) have been a complete nightmare. Multiple flights canceled, terrible, rude and incompetent customer service, even the leg room in some of their planes is now smaller than low cost flights. I'm never flying with them ever again.