Newsstand - Why London's best airport is in Amsterdam

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/lifestyle/travel/top_review.html?in_review_id=360388&in_review_text_id=305315


Before the rise of City Airport, Stansted, and Luton, Schiphol ran a cheeky campaign positioning itself at regional business travellers as the capital's "third airport", easier to reach than Heathrow and Gatwick.

It worked: traffic has leapt fivefold since 1990. "Thirty-one per cent of our total users are British. More than half are travelling for business reasons, and we're working hard to facilitate them. We know which side our bread is buttered on," says the Dutch international airport's director of passenger marketing, Leon Verhallen.

Let's face it, Heathrow is almost full to capacity, Gatwick is the busiest single-runway airport in the world, the skies of the South-East are clogged, and decisions on Terminal 5 are being further delayed. "The more London gets snarled up, the closer Schiphol becomes," says Verhallen.

The pitch this time is to make Londoners choose Europe's fourth largest airport as their preferred hub. Schiphol serves 217 destinations compared with Heathrow's 160 and the subliminal message is that it may pay (in several ways) to skip Heathrow.

While no harassed executive will forgo favoured carriers and convenient direct schedules to reroute via Holland when Heathrow or Gatwick are convenient (nor jeopardise hard-earned FF points), Schiphol is certainly building a good case: a one-terminal concept which obviates schlepping between buildings; minimum connection time (MCT) of 40 minutes short and 50 minutes long haul; and one of Europe's best punctuality records.

Capacity has been increased on the D-pier concourse - the busiest - and it is now used almost exclusively for UK flights. Refurbishment of the central lounge is complete, a new shopping complex and communications centre have opened and a further £1 billion is being spent on expansion.

The most important incentive, though, is price. Latest European Corporate Travel Index (ECTI) from American Express shows that America-bound UK business travellers pay more than European counterparts. A cost-per-mile Business Class comparison shows UK-US 1.43 euros against Amsterdam-US 0.89 euros.

Despite irritations such as runway and baggage delays, the market from the five combined London airports grew by more than three per cent in 2000 to 3.6 million passengers.

NatWest banker Alastair Holmes is typical of the City-based Essex resident who has switched to Schiphol. "I take the earlybird KLM uk feeder flights from City or Stansted, then transfer at Schiphol for Euro cities and the US. Heathrow and Gatwick were such a bind to reach - here check-in times are shorter, gates closer, plus the environment is reasonably restful." As a KLM Silverwing Frequent Flyer, Holmes has sometimes been able to upgrade. "Try getting that with Air Miles. Besides, point-to-point fares are excellent."

Matthew Davis, director, Consulting Services Amex Europe, acknowledges that more executives are flying from a Continental hub - particularly since connection times are being fine-tuned, bolstered by alliances and code-shares.

"For corporations who move personnel on to preferred suppliers with whom they've struck deals, Schiphol's virtues offer a win-win situation," he says. What about inconvenience? "Our research shows the 'extra time' factor is nothing like as bad as it's initially perceived."

Malcolm Rose, director of Phoenix Travel, a top 10 business-travel agency, concurs. "Many of our clients now use Schiphol as part of their corporate travel policy. The consolidated savings are huge, and that includes factoring in the London-Amsterdam leg [eg, KLM uk £259]". There are two further factors on the horizon. EasyJet, unhappy about Luton's fee increases, is threatening to relocate its hub to Schiphol (how this would work in practice needs resolving).

British travel agents are fulminating against BA's fee structures due to be introduced in April. "We're mightily peed off," says one leading travel manager. "Our commission on business tickets to New York, for example, will come in around £40. On KLM, Delta or Northwest via Schiphol it's about £310. Do the sums. It's likely we'll be encouraging companies to reroute and offer incentives to do so."

This solution is going to work for some time but the dutch government have heavy laws preventing air noise pollution, every time Schiphol breaks these regulations they have to cough up around 50000$, they are allowed about 260000 flight movements a year, last year they went over it by only 10 flights, mainly due to lot's of euro2000 flights, the way schiphol is growing now they need loads more slots... Plans for a 5th runway are finished but the dutch "forest lovers agency" bought a small piece of land exactly where the runway was planned (called the bulderbos, simply translated, noise forest..) and it's already taken Schiphol a year just to get 10% of this land back...

The Dutch government have a wacky idea of building a new airport 50 km outside the coast to reduce noice pollution from Schiphol, if that's there then surely they can come up with some kind of shuttle service to the UK? Estimated cost would be around 10 billion US$.....

As for Easyjet, they are seriously considering buying the old Fokker hanger and converting it into a completly new terminal, lot's of people thing Easyjet's owner is mad but till now every one of his ideas seem to work...

On a lighter note, the fokker building had a HUGE "TO LET" sign on the front, some guy broke into Schiphol and inserted an I creating a huge TOILET sign everyone at the airport could see, they painted over it the same day!

Are the British travelers flying into Amsterdam or are they taking the chunnel into Amsterdam ?

I figure by plane. London - Amsterdam is only 40 to 50 minutes by plane compared to the 7hr 30 minutes it will take you by train or car.

I usually stay in AMS and commute to Londond. Although for early morning meetings it just does not work. We leave AMS on time and then London ATC slows us down and makes us fly in circles usually for 45 to 75 minutes.