The Schiphol airport group booked net profit of €132m last year, down 29% on a year earlier, as the effect of falling passenger numbers continued to be felt.

Net profit was boosted by a tax windfall of €33m, the airport authority said in a statement. Turnover for the state-owned airports group was flat at €1.15bn.
The company is planning to cut its workforce by a further 16% this year, following a 5.4% reduction in 2009. This year’s cuts will be partly achieved by outsourcing, the statement said.
Restructuring
‘The unprecedented decline in traffic and transport in 2009 has forced us to respond swiftly by restructuring the organisation, implementing tighter cost-saving measures and critically reviewing all our investment plans,’ said CEO Jos Nijhuis.
‘In the end, the effect of the decline in traffic on our results was less negative than expected at the half year stage,’ he said. But ‘given the fragility of the current economic recovery, we expect that in 2010 traffic and transport will show only slight growth.’
Total passenger numbers at the group’s airports in Amsterdam Schiphol, Rotterdam and Eindhoven fell 7.7% to 46.3 million. The number of passengers using Schiphol was down 8.1% at 43.6 million.