Schiphol Airport has announced the largest investment plan in the history of the Dutch airport. Spending 6 billion euros over the next five years, the airport plans to make improvements to infrastructure, employee working conditions and passenger services.
The airport in Amsterdam will see much improvement between 2024 and 2029. The 6 billion euro investment will go towards maintaining and upgrading important parts of the infrastructure including Pier C, the baggage basement, climate control systems, escalators, aircraft stands and taxiways. Renovations of passenger and employee facilities are also on the list, along with improving the working conditions for staff.
This large investment comes after Schiphol already injected 3 billion euros into expanding and improving the airport terminals between 2023 and 2027. CEO of Royal Schiphol Group Pieter van Oord said in a statement that the new plans are “crucial to restore the satisfaction of our passengers and good service to our airlines.”
Dutch airports have seen an increase in plane passengers this year. In the first six months of 2024, Schiphol Airport alone saw 31,8 million passengers - up 11 percent compared with the same period last year. The number of flights also rose by 12 percent with 230.417 flights in total.
Even though the airport was busy during May and the summer holidays, it had a “smooth operational performance”. According to the airport, they would still like to improve passenger satisfaction further and are investing billions of euros to achieve this. “At the same time, there must be a balance with our environment,” said Van Oord. “We are and remain committed to reducing our noise pollution for our environment and to improving the working conditions of all employees at our airport.”
The Dutch airport is under pressure from the government to cut noise pollution and flight numbers. At the same time, the biggest airport in the Netherlands for international travel is also feeling the effects of the country’s worker shortage.
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