KLM will stop night passenger flights at Schiphol

With the start of the summer schedule, no KLM passenger flights will depart or arrive at Schiphol between midnight and 6 a.m., the company said. In practice, four intercontinental flights land at Schiphol Airport not between 5am and 6am, but later in the early morning.

The intervention does not mean the end of night trips in Schiphol. Budget airline Transavia, also part of Air France-KLM, flies at night and early in the morning. There are also cargo flights.

Schiphol contraction

In April 2023, Schiphol presented plans to ban night flights as much as possible. The focus on 10,000 overnight flights was smaller. The minister then announced that the number of night flights should reduce by more than 32,000 to 28,700 annually.

The targets to reduce the number of overnight flights are part of a long-awaited and much-discussed reduction plan to reduce the number of annual flights allowed at Schiphol from 500,000 to 452,500 from November. The court ruling and resistance from Brussels, the United States and Canada had previously thrown a spanner in the works. As a result, Minister Harpers announced this week that Schiphol's final contraction will not happen this year either.

However, there will still be a “cross-shunt contraction” in 2024. Due to a shortage of staff, especially in air traffic control, Schiphol Airport is unable to supervise half a million take-offs and landings. This means that “only” 483,000 flights can be made.