Minister Harbers (Infrastructure and Water Management) must speed up the plan to secure the future of Groningen Airport Eelde (GAE) and make the airport profitable. That is what the director of the airport, Meiltje de Groot, says. She points to the proposal of VVD MP Daniel Koerhuis, which was adopted by the House of Representatives in March.
“We would like to see the ministry act more energetically,” notes De Groot. The airport director was present yesterday at the House of Representatives debate, which was about regional airports in the Netherlands. The Drenthe airport was discussed.
Koerhuis’s proposal called for ‘investigating together with the Northern Netherlands how Groningen Airport Eelde can be made economically profitable and continuity can be guaranteed, and what role Schiphol can play in this regard’. More than two-thirds of the parties voted in favor of this motion on the loss-making airport.
She is pleased that Koerhuis has again hammered away at the adopted proposal. In the debate, the VVD member also advocated transporting six million travelers via Eelde every year. De Groot does add a few caveats to this. “That number of travelers does not fit within the current permit. The idea is nice, also because it will provide a better spread over the Dutch airports. Many passengers go to Schiphol, which you can really divide more logically across the Netherlands.” She does not make any statements about how many travelers GAE can handle.
Due to the personnel problems at Schiphol, Eelde continues to offer to take over up to twenty flights a day. “Although a decision has to be made in the short term. We have to train extra people for this, and that takes time. The longer we wait, the more difficult it is for us.” A situation such as at the national airport, where there is a major shortage of personnel, is not a realistic scenario for Eelde, reports De Groot. “We receive unsolicited applications every day. The situation here is completely different than in the West.”