In any case, the major renovation work at Eindhoven Air Base will not start before 2027. Eindhoven Airport announced this on its website. Due to the work, the entire airport will be closed for five months.
On Wednesday it was announced that the runway at Eindhoven Air Base will have to be completely renovated sometime in the coming years. It remained unclear exactly when that work would begin.
Now Eindhoven Airport is also responding to the messages from the day before. According to the airport, the planning depends entirely on what the Ministry of Defense, owner of the airport, ultimately decides.
However, we do not have to expect a closure of Eindhoven Airport in the short term. “If the Defense Department makes a final decision to carry out the work, it will not start before 2027,” Eindhoven Airport added in its statement.
Travel industry concerned
Frank Oostdam of travel association ANVR previously stated that he was viewing the work with great apprehension. “Ten percent of holiday traffic in the Netherlands departs from this airport. My proposal would be to distribute the flights among the other airports. I realize that that is easier said than done. But it cannot be the case that the problem is on the plate of the travel sector.”
However, according to aviation expert Joris Melkert of Delft University of Technology, the months-long closure is not an unnecessarily long period. “At Schiphol, the runways are also closed for months for maintenance. The difference is that in Eindhoven you only have one runway.”