Amsterdam Airport Schiphol never gets out of the headlines. This time it's not about the chaos that has now become commonplace, but that the government will allow a maximum of 2023 flights per year from November 440.000. The aim is to protect residents from aircraft noise.

KLM is not very happy, because the carrier has a large hub in Schiphol. One is downright appalled, because the new regulation not only means that one cannot continue to grow, but also that one has to downsize. The future permitted flight movements are eleven percent below those that Amsterdam had in 2019.

The government's plan: You want to shift point-to-point traffic to Lelystad Airport. However, this is the next "construction site", because the airport mentioned should actually have been expanded and expanded on the network for several years. On the other hand, there is massive resistance from the local population, which has also led to numerous lawsuits. At the moment it is not at all foreseeable whether and if so when Lelystad can go online in its intended form as a Schiphol relief.

But KLM is also upset for another reason: While you can clearly distinguish between low-cost airlines that only sell point-to-point connections, things are different with a hub-and-spoke carrier like KLM. As a rule, there are both transfer passengers and point-to-point passengers in the aircraft. Depending on the route, the ratio of these two passenger groups varies. The European traffic is predominantly point-to-point and a strong pillar of the largest carrier in the Netherlands. So which routes will be eliminated or relocated to the hypothetical Lelystad Airport? KLM is convinced that it always comes at the expense of the connectivity of the Netherlands.

The airline is still hoping that the decision can still be changed somehow. It is assumed that when the Schiphol cap comes into force, the hub will shrink sharply and will be roughly thrown back to where it was in 2014. Furthermore, there would then also be no opportunities for growth, so that KLM would be cemented in place. At the same time, that relief airport, i.e. Lelystad, which should also create space for further growth in Schiphol, is still without an operating license for scheduled services. It is not currently foreseeable whether this will ever be granted.