More than 16 million passengers used the five main Dutch airports in the first three months of 2025, suggesting numbers are levelling off after the post-pandemic recovery.

The latest figures from the statistics agency CBS show numbers were 1.8% higher than in the first quarter of 2024. The first three months are usually the quietest period of the year at airports, accounting for around 21% of all flights.

The rise is the smallest since travel restrictions were eased in the second half of the pandemic, following a 71% drop in passenger numbers in 2020. Last year 76.3 million people flew to or from the Netherlands, five million fewer than in 2019.

The figures also show Schiphol airport’s dominance of the sector in the Netherlands is increasing, despite recent governments pledging to curb flight numbers in response to campaigns by local residents against noise pollution.

More than 89% of all air passengers arrived or left via the main hub, while the second largest airport, Eindhoven, handled just under 9%.

Schiphol was also the only airport to report an increase in both flight and passenger numbers. Rotterdam The Hague’s passenger numbers increased by 2.5% despite a 2.1% drop in flights, while the number of people using Maastricht Aachen airport dropped by 47%, largely as a result of a number of winter routes being scrapped.

Eindhoven and Rotterdam The Hague also recorded more passengers than in the first quarter of 2019, after both expanded in the years after the pandemic. The number of people travelling to and from Rotterdam was up by 30%, while Eindhoven’s passenger numbers grew by 5.8%.

The fifth international airport, Eelde in Groningen, saw passenger numbers drop by 4.4% in the first three months of 2025, while flight numbers were down by 1%.