Amsterdam Airport owner will Iinvest €6 billion in upgrades

Schiphol Group NV, the owner of Amsterdam’s airport, will spend €6 billion ($6.7 billion) in upgrading the hub’s infrastructure over the next five years, its biggest investment plan to date.

The investment will go toward maintaining and renewing key airport infrastructure including baggage, climate-control systems, escalators and taxiways, according to a statement on Friday. The outlay is double the amount Schiphol had announced last year for the four years through 2027.

The company, which also operates Eindhoven and Rotterdam airports, said passenger satisfaction was not at desired levels. The state of the infrastructure is “currently far from what we want to offer our passengers,” Pieter van Oord, the chief executive officer of Schiphol Group said in the statement. 

Amsterdam Schiphol was last year dubbed the world’s worst airport by Willie Walsh, the head of the International Air Transport Association, amid a battle over a capacity reduction plan and an increase in charges.

Schiphol’s Chief Financial Officer Robert Carsouw said the airport had made fixes that were possible with the assets it had, citing for instance, improved wait times at security. However, upgrades are required across the facility, he said. 

“When it comes to having sufficient square meters, having clean toilets, making sure that when there are queues you have sufficient space to queue, that requires an overhaul of most of the airport,” Carsouw said in an interview.

The airport on Friday said monthly traffic numbers were “increasingly” close to pre-Covid levels, with more departing passengers on peak days in May and during the summer vacation period than in 2019. The group anticipates the total passengers at its Amsterdam airport will be between 65 million and 68 million this year.

(Updates with details and CFO comment from the fourth paragraph)

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