Schiphol had ‘a bad year, disappointed travelers’ and made a loss

What everyone already knew, Schiphol now also says itself when presenting the annual figures. The airport company had a bad year in 2022. Despite a strong recovery in air traffic, Schiphol made a loss of 77 million euros at the bottom of the line.

These poor financial figures are in line with the major problems the airport has been facing in the past year, such as staff shortages, large-scale cancellations, long queues and airlines forced to cancel flights.

Penitent dress

The new CEO of Schiphol, Ruud Sondag, once again puts on the penitentiary for this: “Never before in the history of Schiphol have we disappointed so many travelers and airlines as in 2022. The commitment and hard work of everyone at Schiphol have has not led to the necessary improvements in the system. As a result, we have not been able to provide the service we wanted. 2022 will go down in our history books as a bad chapter.”

Schiphol had 52.5 million passengers in 2022, more than double compared to the 25.5 million in 2021, when there were still plenty of corona restrictions. The number of flights amounted to 398,000, in 2021 there were 267,000.

Sondag says he is now working hard on recovery at the airport. “In 2022 we will start implementing structural improvements. Because we have to do better. And I am convinced that we can.”

Still limitations

A month ago, Schiphol said that there would be no restrictions on the number of travelers from the end of March. But earlier this week, Schiphol came back from that. Thousands fewer passengers are admitted per day up to and including the May holiday. About 70,000 passengers can be processed per day, 5 percent less than previously thought.

In the attempts to solve the problems, Schiphol incurred around 120 million euros in extra costs last year. For example, a surcharge was added to wages to attract and retain staff.

440,000 flights

The airport says that full recovery of air traffic to pre-corona levels remains uncertain. This is also because the government is going to reduce the maximum number of flights at Schiphol. Now the limit is 500,000 and that maximum was almost reached in 2019 with 497,000. In the long term, Schiphol will be allowed to handle a maximum of 440,000 flights per year, but when that rule will take effect is still unclear.