Amsterdam’s Lelystad Airport now set to open for commercial flights in 2024. Will it ever?
CAPA has frequently commented on the long-winded procedure to bring Lelystad Airport, to the east of Amsterdam and built on land reclaimed from the sea, into commercial service; to relieve the pressure on Schiphol Airport, where flight numbers are to be capped from the end of 2023.
Now it seems it is set to do so in 2024, a decade after the prospect was first mooted.
The underlying problem is that the Dutch authorities are stuck between a rock and a hard place. In particular the city council (historically left wing and dominated by the 'GroenLinks' [Green Left] party, though not so much since the 2022 elections), has never been a supporter of air travel, whereas the central government understands the importance of the Schiphol Airport hub to the country's international standing.
The result is an impasse that has dragged on and on, and will continue to do so until 2024, by which time every conceivable environmental reason for axing the project will have been exhausted, one way or the other.
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