Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport will lose hundreds of thousands of passengers this year to airports just across the border, the Volkskrant reports on Thursday.

The paper says both passengers and airlines think Schiphol is too expensive and the airport itself speaks of a ‘crisis situation’.
‘We are losing lots of customers to airports in Belgium and Germany,’ a Schiphol spokesman told the paper. ‘There they don’t have to pay a tax on flying and security charges are lower because the government pays towards them.’
Travel agency D-reizen has seen a 350% increase in holidaymakers using foreign airports. ‘It is a very substantial number. Dusseldorf in particular is popular,’ director Will van den Hoogen told the Volkskrant. This year Dusseldorf expects 900,000 Dutch nationals will use its services.
Van den Hoogen said the airport itself was partly to blame. ‘Our customers are increasingly unhappy about Schiphol. Not just the high charges, expensive parking, poor accessibility and the endless queues are also sources of irritation.’
Budget airline EasyJet is moving services to Brussels. It has cut its Schiphol passenger numbers by almost 15%, the Volkskrant reports.