Dutch airline KLM has warned that ticket prices will have to increase after its main hub airport Schiphol announced a 41 per cent rise in charges in 2025.
Schiphol said it was having to raise its airport charges due to “exceptionally high inflation and sharply increased interest rates”. Next year’s increase will be followed by a further 5 per cent rise in 2026 before decreasing by 7.5 per cent in 2027.
These changes will mean a total increase of 37 per cent in charges over the three-year period, leading to an average rise of €15 per departing passenger in 2027 compared with this year.
Schiphol is also structuring its new charges to encourage airlines to use “quieter” aircraft as they will incur lower fees than older, noisier aircraft, while night flights will also face additional charges. Some types of aircraft will even be banned from using the airport from 2025 because their noise levels are too high.
Robert Carsouw, chief financial officer of Royal Schiphol Group, said: “This sharp increase in charges is necessary to invest in the desired quality and sustainability at Schiphol, to improve services to airlines and passengers, and to provide decent working conditions for all people working at Schiphol.
“In addition, by making it significantly more expensive or even impossible to fly with noisier aircraft and to fly at night, we are contributing to the reduction of nuisance to our neighbours.”
KLM said that Schiphol’s latest increase in airport charges came on top of a 40 per cent rise over the past three years and warned that higher airfares would be “inevitable” as a result. The airline added that the increase would make the airport “significantly more expensive” than other European hubs such as Paris Charles de Gaulle and Copenhagen.
Marjan Rintel, CEO of KLM, added: “More expensive tickets are inevitable if you increase airport charges so drastically. This is unreasonable and unwise. Unreasonable, because Schiphol is placing the costs of all setbacks and Covid-19 entirely on the airlines.
“Unwise, because in doing so, the airport undermines its competitive position as an international hub. This poses risks for the hub function, the connectivity of the Netherlands and our economy.”
Schiphol has been at the centre of controversy in the past few years as the Dutch government has attempted to cut the number of annual flights permitted at the airport to reduce noise pollution.
The latest policy by the new coalition government would see Schiphol’s flights reduced by between 3 and 5 per cent from November 2025 onwards, although this is a smaller cut than proposed in previous plans.
Meanwhile, KLM is currently undergoing a “painful” €450 million restructuring process with its capacity yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.