Schiphol: A Drained Lake Airport, the Polderbaan and a Diamond Heist

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Amsterdam Airport Schiphol moves nearly 69 million people a year on ground 11 to 15 feet below sea level, the bed of the Haarlemmermeer lake that the Dutch pumped dry in the mid-1800s to create a polder. Records of the name date to 1447; the legend that it means ship hell has been debunked, and it likely describes low, marshy ground. A military airfield opened beside Fort Schiphol in 1916, French pilots mocked its mud as a bathing resort, and KLM began scheduled service from London in 1920. By 1940 it had four hard runways, but German forces captured it, Allied bombing damaged it, and the Germans destroyed what remained in 1944. The rebuilt airport adopted a single terminal concept in 1967, with one roof and one basement baggage system serving a hub where 36.6 percent of passengers are transferring.

Designer Benno Wissing created the yellow and green signage and barred other signs, shops and ads from using those shades. The Polderbaan, completed in 2003, sits five kilometers from the terminal, requires a 10 to 20 minute taxi over a bridge across the A5 motorway, needed its own control tower, and handles only northbound takeoffs and southbound landings to keep noise from homes. In 1992 El Al Flight 1862 suffered an engine separation after takeoff and crashed into flats in the Bijlmermeer. In 2005 armed thieves in a stolen KLM van took an estimated 75 million euros in uncut diamonds. After pandemic layoffs, 2022 staff shortages caused queues into the street, passenger caps and the September 2022 resignation of CEO Dick Benschop.

• The Rijksmuseum ran an annex inside Schiphol from 2002 to 2024, the world's first airport art museum.
• From 2006 to 2019 couples could get married at the airport, which also has its own mortuary and a library of translated Dutch works.
• A Maarten Baas clock shows a man behind translucent glass painting and erasing the hands minute by minute.
• In May 2024 an airport worker died after intentionally entering the running engine of an Embraer 190 during pushback.
• A 6 billion euro plan announced in 2024 includes Pier A, now expected in April 2027 at nearly 1.4 billion euros, and a new baggage basement dug beneath the working terminal.