The Netherlands transport ministry is facing strong opposition to its plan to shift short-haul vacation flights away from Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, increasing its capacity to handle long-haul international flights.
The plan, to take effect in two years, still has to be approved by the ministry, and is based on an upgrade to Lelystad Airport, now used for business, personal and general aviation. The plan would move flights from Amsterdam to 89 destinations to Lelystad, which is three times further away and has only limited public transit links to the city.
The shift would apply to all destinations between 700 and 4,000km from Schiphol, and which are not capital cities. That means everywhere in Greece, Portugal and Croatia except for their capitals, as well as many popular vacation spots in Turkey, Spain and Morocco.
EasyJet, a major carrier on many of those routes, has complained that it favors KLM, the dominant carrier at Schiphol. In particular, Belfast International, which KLM flies to, is considered a capital airport under the plan, while Belfast City, used by EasyJet, is not.
