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The goverment cannot introduce a cap at airports.

 

Airplane
The Dutch gov­ern­ment can­not intro­duce a cap on flight num­bers at Schiphol air­port, Ams­ter­dam, a court has ruled, block­ing an attempt to reduce the industry’s envir­on­mental impact.

A court in Haar­lem said yes­ter­day that the gov­ern­ment could not cut flight num­bers by 8 cent, to 460,000 a year, because it had not gone through the cor­rect pro­ced­ures when it brought in the rules as tem­por­ary meas­ures.

«Accord­ing to European rules, the state can only reduce the num­ber of air trans­port move­ments at an air­port after going through a care­ful pro­cess,» the court said.

Other car­ri­ers, includ­ing easyJet, Tui and Delta, were involved in bring­ing the case. Schiphol said the decision provided clar­ity and pledged to «con­tinue with everything we do to make avi­ation quieter and cleaner».

The infra­struc­ture and water man­age­ment min­istry did not respond to a request for com­ment.

The case res­ted on the local impact of fly­ing, includ­ing noise and nitro­gen diox­ide levels, and was closely watched in the European sec­tor as one of the state’s first efforts to limit fly­ing on envir­on­mental grounds.

But cam­paign­ers have ques­tioned the poten­tial of the tech­no­lo­gies, which are com­mer­cially unproven, and said the judg­ment was a set­back.

«The avi­ation sec­tor is spin­ning a flawed net zero nar­rat­ive to cover for its pur­suit of industry growth in total con­tra­dic­tion with cli­mate goals,» Johnny White, a law­yer at char­ity Cli­ent Earth, said.

Schiphol, major­ity-owned by the state, has stood out as an air­port will­ing to sac­ri­fice growth because of envir­on­mental con­cerns.

This week announced plans to become «quieter, cleaner and bet­ter» and said it would con­sult air­lines on a ban on night flights and private jets and a reversal of plans to build an addi­tional run­way.

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