The boss of Amsterdam Schiphol has pledged the airport will improve in 2023 after a frank admission of its poor operational performance in 2022.
The Dutch hub saw widespread flight disruption last year, with delays, cancellations and long queues caused by staff shortages.
Commenting on a loss-making year, Ruud Sondag, chief executive of Royal Schiphol Group, said: “Never before in Schiphol’s history have we disappointed so many travellers and airlines as in 2022.
“Our efforts and hard work did not lead to the necessary improvements in the system and, as a result, we were not able to provide the service we wanted.
“2022 will therefore go down as a bad chapter in our own history books. But it is also a chapter we will not forget, so that all new chapters we write will be better.
“We are working hard on this, and in 2022 we started to implement structural improvements. Because we have to do better. And I am convinced that we can.”
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The statement about the group’s 2022 financial results – headlined ‘Schiphol closes a poor 2022’ – show an underlying loss of €28 million despite a strong recovery in traffic.
It made an underlying loss of €287 million in 2021.
Revenue at the group – which includes Eindhoven and Rotterdam The Hague airports – increased by 83% to €1.5 billion (2021: €816 million).
“Upscaling issues have overshadowed the operational performance of Schiphol,” said the results statement.
“To support recovery from the operational issues, Schiphol incurred extra costs of approximately €120 million.”
Schiphol saw 52.5 million passengers in 2022, up from 25.5 million in 2021 but still well below 2019’s figure of 71.7 million. Eindhoven saw 6.3 million, while Rotterdam The Hague reported 2.1 million in 2022.
Previous group chief executive Dick Benschop resigned last September and stayed on until November when Sondag took the reins.
Picture of Schiphol airport by Nancy Beijersbergen/Shutterstock.com