Capacity - Netherlands

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PRB monitoring

▪ Netherlands registered 0.08 minutes of average en route ATFM delay per flight during 2024, which remained 0.08 after the post-ops adjustment process, thus achieving the local target value of 0.14. Delays in Netherlands increased by 0.01 minutes per flight year-on-year.

▪ The majority of delays were generated in May, September and October, mainly due to ATC Capacity issues and adverse weather conditions.

▪ The share of delayed flights with delays longer than 15 minutes in the Netherlands decreased by 2 percentage points compared to 2023 and was lower than 2019 values.

▪ The average number of IFR movements was 8% below 2019 levels in the Netherlands in 2024.

▪ The number of ATCOs in OPS is 80, being below the 2024 plan in Amsterdam by 1 FTE.

▪ The yearly total of sector opening hours in Amsterdam ACC was 40,138, showing a 0.3% increase compared to 2023. Sector opening hours are 0.3% above 2019 levels.

▪ Amsterdam ACC registered 13.79 IFR movements per one sector opening hour in 2024, being 7.6% below 2019 levels.

▪ Netherlands registered an average airport arrival ATFM delay of 3.50 minutes per flight in 2024, thus not achieving the local target of 1.40 minutes.

▪ Compared to 2023, average arrival ATFM delays in the Netherlands were 44% higher in 2024, while the number of IFR arrivals increased by 6%.

▪ The main drivers of delays were other, non-ATC related causes, accounting for 53% of delays, and weather, responsible for 47%.

En route performance

En route ATFM delay (KPI#1)

Summary of capacity performance

The Netherlands achieved the required en route capacity performance for 2024. There were 1 254k flights handled in the Dutch airspace (both Amsterdam ACC and the DECO sectors in MUAC). There were 115k minutes of en route ATFM delay attributed to ANSPs in Dutch airspace.

NSA’s assessment of capacity performance

Targets achieved, with trends expected to continue during RP4.In February 2025.

Eurocontrol published an update of the 7-Year Forecast previously published in Autumn 2024 covering the horizon 2025-2031. This 7-Year forecast contains three scenarios and incorporates the latest flight trends, routings and a full review of the forecast inputs (economic growth, demographics, events, etc.). In 2024, IFR movements experienced 5% growth, reaching 96% of pre-pandemic 2019 levels.

On capacity, weather and temporary airspace closures impacted the performance across the board. The war in Ukraine has caused an increase in military exercises in Dutch airspace. This is expected to continue into the coming years.

Monitoring process for capacity performance

LVNL: Quarterly report from ANSP to State.

MUAC: UAC reports its en-route capacity performance to the states through the MUAC Finance and Performance committee. The performance data is also monitored on a monthly basis through the AFG/PMG (ANSP FABEC Group / Performance Management Group) capacity report. This report is based on MUAC data and available PRU data, which is consolidated and analysed and the results compared to the reference and indicative values.

Capacity planning

LVNL: According to the Network Operations Plan (NOP) 2024-2029 no capacity bottlenecks were expected for Amsterdam ACC. Capacity can still be increased until the traffic demand reaches the 2019 levels. As such, it is consistent with the required performance.

MUAC: MUAC sector capacities are regularly reviewed and updated if technological or other developments allow to do so, leading to increased sector productivity. Staff planning is performed using STATFOR forecasts for traffic growth and taking into account an extrapolated increase of sector productivity for the planning horizon. MUAC has not experienced any structural staffing issues during 2024.

Application of Corrective Measures for Capacity (if applicable)

Not applicable.

En route Capacity Incentive Scheme

LVNL: The incentive scheme is based only on delays attributed to C,R,S,T,M & P delay codes. The LVNL target was set at 0.07 minutes per flight and the actual performance is reported as 0.05 minutes per flight (CRSTMP only). This falls within the deadband so neither bonus nor malus is applicable.
MUAC: The incentive scheme is based only on delays attributed to C,R,S,T,M & P delay codes. The MUAC target was set at 0.09 minutes per flight and the actual performance is reported as 0.11 minutes per flight (CRSTMP only). This falls within the deadband so neither bonus nor malus is applicable.

Other indicators

Due to timing of Ab Initio courses and resulting check-outs, the number of ATCO FTEs end of 2024 dropped to 297. However, this is temporary, and it is planned to go back to 307 FTEs in 2025. For the rest of the reporting period, MUAC plans to have around this same number of ATCOs (small variations may apply due to attrition and Ab Initio training planning).

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 40% of the reported delay not allocated to any cause. Traffic at these 4 airports in 2024 was still 5% lower than in 2019, with an increase of 6% with respect to 2023.

Average arrival ATFM delay in 2024 was 3.5 min/arr, compared to 2.42 min/arr in 2023. ATFM slot adherence has slightly improved (2023: 98.5%; 2024: 98.6%).

Amsterdam (EHAM: 2019: 4.23 min/arr.; 2020: 1.41 min/arr.; 2021: 0.60 min/arr.; 2022: 1.98 min/arr.; 2023: 2.65 min/arr.; 2024: 3.79 min/arr.) significantly increased the arrival ATFM delays, resulting in the second highest value amongst the SES monitored airports in 2024. 50% of the delays were attributed to Aerodrome Capacity issues followed by 47% attributed to Weather. The rest of Dutch airports registered zero or nearly zero arrival ATFM delays in 2024.
According to the Dutch monitoring report: The performance in 2024 was significantly above the target, almost exclusively due to the performance at EHAM; for the other airports airport ATFM delays were nearly non-existent. About half of the delays at EHAM were the result of a demand higher than the declared capacity, both during inbound peaks and outbound peaks. Delays during the latter were amplified compared to 2023 by the non-availability of a fourth runway (only 2+1/1+2 runway usage), in the first quarter due to runway maintenance and for the rest of the year as a measure to cope with controller shortages at Schiphol. Nearly the other half of the delays were due to severe weather, either strong winds or poor visibility. The Airport ATFM delay per flight was not met in 2024, primarily due to aerodrome capacity and weather related incidents. Additionally, runway maintenance and the ATCO shortages caused the target to be above the target for 2024.

Recommendations to the ANSP to rectify the situation Long term corrective measures are expected to be feasible and LVNL is working with AAS, the main airline operators at Schiphol and the slot coordinator to better spread traffic demand, possibly by improving the slot allocation. This with the aim of reducing bunch forming for inbound for inbound aircraft since this is one of the major causes of airport delay at Schiphol. With the envisaged growth in traffic volume at Schiphol this delay cause will gain importance in the coming years. LVNL is working on increasing their ATCO capacity with additional training for which the first effects will start to show at the end of 2025.

Long term corrective measures are expected to be feasible. Although the all cause target was not met, the CRSTMP airport delay target was met. The main causes for the target not being met were out of the control of the ANSP (weather, aerodrome capacity, etc.). Long term corrective measures are considered feasible. Due to the war in Ukraine there has been a Europe-wide trend for more and longer military exercises. These exercises impact the available airspace around the major Aerodrome in the Netherlands. There is significant risk of these exercises further influencing capacity performance.

The Dutch performance plan sets a national target on arrival ATFM delay for 2024 of 1.40 min/arr. This target was not met, with an actual performance of 3.5 min/arr.

The incentive scheme uses modulated pivot values limited to CRSTMP delay causes. According to the Dutch monitoring report, this pivot value for CRSTMP is 0.31 min/arr in 2024 and based on the attribution of the regulation reason, the actual CRSTMP value for 2024 was 0.063 min/arr.
The NSA reports an actual CRSTMP value of 0.07 min/arr and calculates a bonus of € 384807.

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 2024 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
Beek NA 0.01 0.10 0.04 0.01 96.0% 97.4% 97.2% 98.5% 97.4% NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
Eelde 0.01 0.00 0.01 0.01 0.03 88.0% 91.9% 98.1% 99.1% 98.2% NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
Rotterdam NA 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.00 100.0% 98.8% 98.9% 98.9% 97.7% NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
Schiphol 1.41 0.60 1.98 2.65 3.79 97.6% 98.1% 97.7% 98.4% 98.7% NA NA NA NA NA 15.5 20.4 27.3 24.0 21.2

ATFM slot adherence

All four airports showed adherence above 97% and the national average was 98.6%. With regard to the 1.43% of flights that did not adhere, 0.47 % were early and 0.96% were late.

According to the Dutch monitoring report: Performance has been nearly 100% throughout the years, with small deviations per year. No specific measures were taken or are planned, because they are not needed.

ATC pre-departure delay

The calculation of the ATC pre-departure delay is based on the data provided by the airport operators through the Airport Operator Data Flow (APDF).
However, there are several quality checks before EUROCONTROL can produce the final value which is established as the average minutes of pre-departure delay (delay in the actual off block time) associated to the IATA delay code 89 (through the APDF, for each delayed flight, the reasons for that delay have to be transmitted and coded according to IATA delay codes.

However, sometimes the airport operator has no information concerning the reasons for the delay in the off block, or they cannot convert the reasons to the IATA delay codes. In those cases, the airport operator might:
- Not report any information about the reasons for the delay for that flight (unreported delay)
- Report a special code to indicate they do not have the information (code ZZZ)
- Report a special code to indicate they do not have the means to collect or translate the information (code 999)

To be able to calculate with a minimum of accuracy the PI for a given month, the minutes of delay that are not attributed to any IATA code reason should not exceed 40% of the total minutes of pre-departure delay observed at the airport.

According to the Dutch monitoring report: Data should be provided by the airport, not the ANSP.

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 2024 was 21.2 min/dep, an improvement with respect to the previous two years.