Fewer passengers at Dutch airports for first time since Covid due to snow, Iran war

In the first quarter of this year, 16.2 million people traveled to and from the Netherlands’ five national airports. That is over 2 percent less than in the first quarter of 2025 and the first year-on-year decrease since the coronavirus pandemic brought aviation to a halt in 2020, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reported. The statistics office attributes the decrease to the heavy snowfall in January and the Iran war, which the United States and Israel started in late February.

There were also fewer flights than last year. Dutch airports handled 115,000 commercial flights in the first quarter, compared to 121,500 a year earlier. In each of the three months in the first quarter, there were fewer flights than in the same month a year earlier. January and February also saw fewer passengers than a year earlier, but in March, passenger numbers were 1.6 percent higher than in March 2025.

The vast majority of air traffic in the Netherlands happens through Schiphol Airport. The airport in Amsterdam accounts for 89 percent of all flights and 88 percent of all passengers. In the first quarter, there were 102,000 flights at Schiphol, 6.4 percent fewer than a year earlier. The number of passengers decreased by 3.1 percent to 14.4 million.

“This is mainly due to the cancellation of many flights in early January as a result of heavy snowfall,” CBS said. Due to snow on the runways and problems with de-icing planes, hundreds of flights to and from Schiphol were canceled in the first ten days of January. On Wednesday, January 7, there were only 382 flights to and from the Netherlands largest airport, a decrease of nearly 67 percent from that same Wednesday a year earlier.

Canceled flights also meant fewer passengers traveling through Schiphol. From January 1 to 10, 1.2 million people traveled to or from the airport, over a quarter fewer than in the same period in 2025.

“Almost all other airports of national significance also had to deal with winter weather during that period, causing flights to be canceled or delayed,” Schiphol said.

The war in Iran also impacted aviation traffic in the Netherlands. Following the U.S. and Israel’s first bombings at the end of February, the airspace in the region was closed. “The consequences were immediately visible.” In March, there were 425 flights between the five Dutch airports and Israel, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. That is a 60 percent decrease compared to March 2025. The number of flights to and from Qatar decreased by 80 percent, and those to and from Israel by 85 percent.

The number of travelers between the Netherlands and Qatar decreased by over 91 percent, from 33,800 in March 2025 to 3,000 this year. The number of passengers to and from the UAE fell by 82 percent, and to and from Israel by 90.5 percent.

Freight transport was much less affected. The volume of transported cargo increased by 6 percent to over 373,000 tons. Maastricht Aachen Airport saw the strongest increase. Over 11,000 tons of cargo were transported to and from that airport, an increase of 57.5 percent. Most goods were transported by air to and from China and the United States.