Impact of Aviation Tax and Policies on Amsterdam Airport Schiphol: an Airline Network Design Analysis

Abstract

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol characterises itself as a major hub in Europe. Its network is not sustainable with only the Dutch catchment area. Instead, it relies on transfer passengers. When new tax regimes and policies are implemented to combat the environmental impacts of the airport, a change in passenger flows could affect Schiphol’s network quality. The thesis proposes a MILP model to analyse the effects of new policies by simulating passenger flows between airports. A profit-based optimisation model with a greenfield airline network is formulated, which incorporates passenger classes with different time sensitivities to account for passenger preferences in the network design. This approach predicts that hubs at the edges of Europe are better gateways to the continent based on the higher share of transfers. A case study on the implementation of a transfer tax at Schiphol shows that the share of transfers declines, but the network will only see reduced frequencies of destinations.