Capacity - Netherlands

PRB monitoring

▪ LVNL registered 0.01 minutes of average en route ATFM delay per flight during 2020, thus meeting the local breakdown value of 0.14.

▪ Delays must be considered in the context of the traffic evolution: IFR movements in 2020 were 55% below the 2019 levels in the Netherlands.

▪ The Netherlands reported no capacity issues and a 2% increase in ATCO FTE numbers in 2020 compared to 2019 values.

▪ Delays were driven by ATC capacity issues.

▪ The share of delayed flights with delays longer than 15 minutes in the Netherlands decreased by 19.25 p.p. compared to 2019.

▪ The yearly total of sector opening hours in Amsterdam ACC was 40,138, showing a 0.3% increase compared to 2019.

▪ Amsterdam ACC registered 6.68 IFR movements per one sector opening hour in 2020, being 55.2% below 2019 levels.

En route performance

En route ATFM delay (KPI#1)

Summary of capacity performance

NSA’s assessment of capacity performance

Monitoring process for capacity performance

Capacity planning

Application of Corrective Measures for Capacity (if applicable)

Other indicators

Terminal performance

Arrival ATFM delay (KPI#2)

For the Netherlands, the scope of the performance monitoring of terminal services under RP3 comprises a total of 4 airports. In accordance with IR (EU) 2019/317 and the traffic figures at these 4 airports, only Amsterdam must be monitored for pre-departure delays.
The Airport Operator Data Flow is fully established at Amsterdam and the monitoring of pre-departure delays can be performed. Nevertheless, the quality of the reporting does not allow for the calculation of the ATC pre-departure delay, with more than 60% of the reported delay not allocated to any cause.

Traffic at these 4 airports decreased in 2020 by 53%. Amsterdam, after reaching its maximum allowed capacity of 500,000 movements per year in previous years, saw a reduction in traffic in 2020 of 54%.
Despite the traffic reduction, arrival ATFM delays at Amsterdam were still high (5th highest in the SES area) and all causes pre-departure delays were also very high (2nd highest in the SES area) especially in the second trimester.

The massive traffic drop due to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in Europe as from March 2020 has reduced the 2020 March - December traffic to a very low level at these airports (from -36% in March down to -89% in April).
Amsterdam (EHAM: 2019: 4.23 min/arr.; 2020: 1.41 min/arr.) registered significant arrival ATFM delays during the first trimester of 2020, averaging 3.18 min/arr during this period (vs 4.93 min/arr during the same first trimester of 2019).
Zero delays were observed between April and June, and some minor delays were caused by weather regulations during the second half of the year,
The other 3 airports did not observe any arrival ATFM delay in 2020.

The provisional national target on arrival ATFM delay in 2020 was met.

In accordance with Article 3 (3) (a) of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1627: The incentive scheme shall cover only the calendar years 2022 to 2024.

Other terminal performance indicators (PI#1-3)

Airport level
Airport name
Avg arrival ATFM delay (KPI#2)
Slot adherence (PI#1)
ATC pre departure delay (PI#2)
All causes pre departure delay (PI#3)
2020 2021 2022 2023 2020 2021 2022 2023 2020 2021 2022 2023 2020 2021 2022 2023
Beek NA NA NA NA 96.0% NA% NA% NA% NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
Eelde 0.01 NA NA NA 88.0% NA% NA% NA% NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
Rotterdam NA NA NA NA 100.0% NA% NA% NA% NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
Schiphol 1.41 NA NA NA 97.6% NA% NA% NA% NA NA NA NA 15.5 NA NA NA

ATFM slot adherence

With the drastic drop in traffic, the share of regulated departures from Amsterdam (EHAM), Rotterdam (EHRD) and Maastricht (EHBK) airports virtually disappeared as of April. The annual figures are therefore driven by the performance in the first trimester.
These three airports showed adherence above 95% and the national average was 97.6%.With regard to the 2.4% of flights that did not adhere, 0.9% was early and 1.5% was late.
Only 25 departures from Groningen (EHGG) were regulated in 2020, so the 12% of departures outside of the STW are in fact only 3 flights.

ATC pre-departure delay

The share of unidentified delay reported by Amsterdam (the only Dutch airport subject to monitoring of this indicator) in 2020 has been above 40% for more than 2 months in the year, preventing the calculation of this indicator.
The insufficient data quality provided by Amsterdam is a long standing issue prior to April 2020, but the situation has worsened since April 2020 due to the special traffic composition since then. The unidentified delay after April 2020 has been around 80% of all delays.

All causes pre-departure delay

Amsterdam is the only Dutch airport subject to the monitoring of this indicator.
The total (all causes) delay in the actual off block time at Amsterdam in 2020 was 15.52 min/dep. which is the 3rd highest among the RP3 monitored airports. The higher delays per flight were observed in the second trimester of the year, due to the lower traffic and extraordinary circumstances. In November and December there was also a significant increase of the delay per flight, averaging almost 25 min/dep in December.