Amsterdam airport to ban private jets, night flights

Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport has said that it would stop night flights and bar private jets in a bid to cut greenhouse gas emissions and noise pollution.

Aircraft will be banned from taking off between midnight and 6 a.m. and will not be allowed to land before 5 a.m., Royal Schiphol Group chief executive Ruud Sondag said in a statement.

The changes at one of Europe's biggest air hubs are set to take effect from 2025-2026.Currently flights are allowed to land or take off around the clock, though the numbers are limited.

"The only way forward is to become quieter and cleaner, faster," Sondag said in a statement. "For too long we have thought only about growth and too little about its toll."    

The ban on night flights would bring "peace for the surrounding area," Schiphol said, after years of complaints about noise.

There would be 10,000 fewer night-time flights a year as a result, it said.

And private jets are being barred because they cause a "disproportionate amount of noise nuisance and CO2 emissions per passenger."

These amounted to about 20 times as many CO2 emissions as a scheduled flight, it said.

Dutch police in November arrested hundreds of climate activists after they stormed an apron at Schiphol, cycled around and then sat in front of private jets to prevent them from leaving.

The Netherlands said in June 2022 that it would cut flights at Schiphol to 440,000 annually by 2024, down from a pre-Covid level of 500,000, to stem noise pollution and emissions.   

Top airlines including Dutch flag carrier KLM, Delta and EasyJet said in March that they were taking legal action against the Dutch government.