Schiphol rides out slot shortage to handle 1.75 million tonnes in 2017

Freighter slot space has been infamously tight at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Cargo in recent months, but the handling facility still reported an increase of 5.4 percent in 2017 airfreight volumes. The airport said that strong demand in the Far East for European goods boosted total cargo figures to 1.75 million tonnes.

While annual imports from Asia increased by 3.1 percent to just under 300,000 tonnes, the real growth was in exports to the region, which grew by 8.8 percent, year-over-year, to 316,097 tonnes.

The last year saw so much activity at the airport that Schiphol was forced to temporarily restrict freighter slots. The tense situation was eventually rectified, but not before the situation devolved into a diplomatic standoff involving the Russian government and Moscow-based freighter operator AirBridgeCargo.

The spat drew attention to the importance of freight in the airport’s overall strategy, with Jonas van Stekelenburg, head of cargo at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport (AMS) explaining that, “The slot scarcity has been a challenge for us as a cargo community and, in some cases, cargo stakeholders were under-represented in the various sections of the airport community.”

Van Stekelenburg said that, in the year ahead, Schiphol will act address the slot shortage matter, “together with all freighter airlines, handlers and other logistic service providers,” adding that “the upswing in e-commerce shipments, both inbound and outbound, was a large contributor to the cargo volumes for this market.”

Asia remains Schiphol’s largest market, with Shanghai being the busiest destination. “A number of flights transit Europe en-route to Asia, and we can attribute a proportion of the growth in our European figures to the developing Asian market,” van Stekelenburg explained.

Total European exports out of AMS grew 19.1 per cent to 123,950 tonnes in 2017, with imports up 18.2 per cent to 124,992 tonnes.

“This year [2018] began on a positive note at Schiphol, with an increase in load factors,” as well as a slight growth in air traffic movements as a consequence of unused slots, van Stekelenburg said. “It is very positive that in this current 2017/2018 winter season, all requested full-freighter slots were granted, and many freighters were able to continue their business at Schiphol with ad-hoc slots.” he added.