Amsterdam Airlines to fly five times weekly from Maastricht Aachen Airport (MAA)
From June, Amsterdam Airlines is to fly five times weekly from Maastricht Aachen Airport (MAA). The new Dutch airline is working in partnership with tour operator Turjet, a Turkey specialist.
Passengers leaving from Dutch soil will from 1 July pay a new air tax. Due to this measure, a number of airline companies are moving to airports just outside the Netherlands. MAA has nevertheless captured a new airline.
Amsterdam Airlines will operate an 180-seat Airbus 320 to fly passengers from MAA to the Turkish destinations of Ankara, Antalya and Kayseri. Recently, Turkish airline company Corendon actually left Maastricht to move abroad.
The advantage of Maastricht for the flights to Turkey lies for Amsterdam Airlines and Turjet in the size of the tax. Flying from MAA to Turkey will cost the passenger 11 euros in ecotax, because the distance is less than 2,500 kilometres, whereas a flight from Schiphol (Amsterdam) to Turkey will carry an ecotax of 45 euros because the distance is over 2,500 kilometres.
Amsterdam Airlines director Matthijs Boertien said that for destinations outside the EU, it is only possible to fly from the country where the airline is based, and this is the Netherlands. “Otherwise we might well have opted for going abroad in connection with the ecotax,” he noted.
On 3 July, a higher court appeal by MAA and Irish airline RyanAir against a lower court ruling on the air tax will be heard. In that case, the two parties unsuccessfully demanded the scrapping of the tax. According to MAA director Sander Heijmans, the Netherlands is involved in disguised state aid by exempting transfer passengers at Schiphol.
Source: NIS News, 30 April 2008
