The outgoing government has come up with a package of measures that it says will reduce the noise problems experienced by people living close to Schiphol airport while increasing the number of flights. 

The proposal, drawn up by infrastructure minister Mark Harbers, will allow between 460,000 and 470,000 take-offs and landings a year, which is at least 7,500 more than had been expected.

“I know this will annoy locals, because they have heard much lower numbers,” Harbers said. “But the number of flights is still below the maximum permitted and will be combined with measures to reduce the nuisance.”

The measures follow a court ruling in which the Dutch state was given a year to meet the rules on reducing noise nuisance. 

Quieter planes

From November, KLM will use quieter planes at night, Harbers said, while admitting this is voluntarily. 

In addition, two runways which cause a lot of problems will be closed between 1 pm and 3 pm, to give locals a rest from the noise. 

Next year, Schiphol will increase landing fees for noisy aircraft and ban take-offs and and ban landings by the worst offenders, such as the Boeing 747-400, between 11 pm and 7 am.  The number of night flights will also go down by 5,000 to 27,000, Harbers said.

Together with the measures taken earlier, the package aims to cut daytime nuisance to locals by 20% by day and by 15% at night, the infrastructure ministry calculations show.

Ministers are also considering a partial ban on night flights from 2026, but a decision on this still has to be made. 

Harbers first said in 2022 that flight movements at Schiphol should be reduced after it emerged the airport authorities had been ignoring official limits for years and the cabinet had turned a blind eye to the excess noise. Schiphol is 100% owned by the state and local authorities.

Several court cases followed and the cabinet agreed to set a lower limit than the 500,000 flight movements currently allowed.