Fewer air passengers in Q1 due to winter weather and Middle East war

© ANP / Koen van Weel
  • A total of 16.2 million air passengers passed through the Netherlands’ five major airports in the first quarter of 2026, down by 2 percent from Q1 2025.
  • Hundreds of flights were cancelled in the first ten days of January due to heavy snowfall.
  • As a result of the war in the Middle East, 60 percent fewer flights were operated and 78 percent fewer air passengers travelled to a number of countries in this region.

In the first quarter of 2026, a total of 16.2 million air passengers travelled to and from the Netherlands’ five major airports, down by 2 percent from Q1 2025. There were 115 thousand commercial flights, compared with 121.5 thousand in the same period last year. Airfreight volumes increased by 6 percent to over 373 thousand tonnes. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reports this on the basis of newly released figures.

First decline in air traffic since the coronavirus pandemic

This was the first year-on-year decrease in quarterly figures for the number of flights operated and passengers carried since the coronavirus pandemic. In each of the three months of Q1 this year, there were fewer flights than in the same period last year. The number of air passengers was also lower in January and February than it was in Q1 2025, but in March it was 1.6 percent higher.

Most air traffic in the Netherlands uses Schiphol Airport: 89 percent of all flights and 88 percent of all air passengers. In the first three months of 2026, there were 102 thousand flights at Schiphol Airport, 6.4 percent less than one year earlier. The number of air passengers travelling through Schiphol in Q1 fell by 3.1 percent to 14.4 million. This was mainly because many flights in early January were cancelled due to heavy snowfall.

Less air traffic at Schiphol due to winter weather

Snow on the runways meant that hundreds of flights to and from Schiphol Airport were cancelled in the first ten days of January. On Wednesday 7 January, in week 2 of 2026, there were 382 flights inbound and outbound flights at the Netherlands' largest airport. That was nearly 67 percent less than the same day last year.

Fewer air passengers travelled to and from Schiphol Airport as a result of these cancelled flights. Between 1 and 10 January, 1.2 million air passengers were carried, over a quarter less than in the same period of 2025. Almost all other major airports in the Netherlands were also affected by bad weather conditions (heavy snowfall) during the same period, leading to cancelled and delayed flights.

Reduced air traffic to certain countries in the Middle East

The air strikes on Iran in late February of this year and the closure of airspace in the region had a direct impact on air traffic in March. That month, a total of 425 flights were operated between Israel, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the five major airports in the Netherlands, down by 60 percent from March 2025. The number of flights to and from Qatar fell by 80 percent, and there were 85 percent fewer flights to and from Israel.

This also had an impact on the number of passengers carried: in March 2025, 33.8 thousand air passengers travelled between the Netherlands and Qatar, while in March 2026 it was 3 thousand, a drop of over 91 percent. The number of passengers to and from the United Arab Emirates fell by nearly 82 percent, and to and from Israel by 90.5 percent.

Maastricht Aachen Airport saw the sharpest increase in air freight volumes

In Q1 2026, airfreight volumes increased by 6 percent, year on year. A total of 362 thousand tonnes of air cargo were carried to and from Schiphol Airport, compared with 345 thousand tonnes in the same period last year, an increase of 4.9 percent. 11 thousand tonnes of air cargo was handled at Maastricht Aachen Airport, the other airport in the Netherlands that handles air freight. That was a 57.5 percent increase relative to the same quarter last year (over 7 thousand tonnes).

Most goods by air were transported to and from China and the United States: 139.6 thousand tonnes in Q1 2024. That was 37.4 percent of all flights to and from the Netherlands, up by 10 percent on Q1 2025.

The effects of the conflict in the Middle East were also noticeable in March in the volumes of airfreight transported to and from countries in that region. In March 2026, 11.9 thousand tonnes of goods were traded between the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia combined. In March 2025, that was 24 thousand tonnes, more than double the current volume.