Rotterdam The Hague Airport, and why regulars refuse to give it up

RTM is small, and that is its entire argument. A guide to the terminal, the arrivals door, the business aviation side and the drive times to the cities it serves.

Almost everyone flying to the Netherlands lands at Schiphol, and for most trips that is the right answer. But the southern half of the Randstad — the ring of cities that holds Rotterdam, The Hague, Delft and Leiden — has an airport of its own, and the people who use it tend to become quietly evangelical about it. Rotterdam The Hague Airport, RTM on your ticket, is small, plain and extremely quick to get out of. Here is how it works and when it is worth choosing.

Where it is, and what it looks like

The airport sits in Overschie, on the northern edge of Rotterdam, directly beside the A13 motorway that runs up to Delft and The Hague. Older Dutch travellers still call it Zestienhoven, the name the airfield carried before it was rebranded for the two cities it serves, and taxi drivers will know exactly what you mean if you use it. There is one terminal, one runway and no internal transit of any kind.

That scale changes the experience more than any lounge could. Flights are often boarded from the apron rather than through an air bridge, which means the distance from your seat to the arrivals door can be measured in minutes rather than in moving walkways. Baggage reclaim is a couple of belts in a single hall. The exit puts you on a kerb with the short-stay car park in front of you and, on a clear day, a view of the motorway you are about to join.

Arriving: where your chauffeur will be standing

At Schiphol we have to tell guests which of four arrivals halls to look for. At RTM there is one, and the chauffeur is inside it with a sign carrying your name, a company name, or nothing if you would rather be met discreetly. We track the flight from the moment the booking is made, so an early landing or a long delay moves the pickup rather than costing you the car, and the walk from the arrivals door to the car is short enough that luggage barely matters.

• Give us the flight number when you book — it is what lets dispatch watch the aircraft rather than the clock.
• Tell us if you need a child seat or baby seat; they are fitted before the car leaves, not improvised on the kerb.
• Groups landing together on one flight are handled as one booking, with the Van Class car taking seven passengers and seven bags.
• Departing, allow the airport’s own recommended margin and book the chauffeur with room to spare — the drive in from Rotterdam is short, but the A13 is one of the busiest stretches of road in the country.

Public transport exists and is decent for a small airport: a bus runs to Rotterdam Centraal and to the nearby metro station at Meijersplein, on the line that continues to The Hague. It is a reasonable option with hand luggage and an unhurried afternoon. It is a poor one with a suitcase, a laptop bag and a meeting.

How far is anything, really

The honest answer is: closer than you expect. These are typical door-to-door drive times from the terminal kerb, outside the worst of the peaks.

• Rotterdam city centre, the Weena hotels and Rotterdam Centraal: around a quarter of an hour, straight down the A13 to the Kleinpolderplein.
• Kop van Zuid, the Wilhelminakade and Rotterdam Ahoy: roughly twenty to twenty-five minutes, depending on which bridge or tunnel the traffic favours.
• Delft, including the university quarter and the old town: about fifteen minutes north on the same motorway.
• The Hague, the World Forum district and the ministries: around half an hour via the A13 and A4.
• Scheveningen and the coast: a little longer again, and worth the detour if your meeting ends early.
• Schiphol, if a connection sends you north: roughly three quarters of an hour of motorway.

For context, the same airport is the practical gateway for the Westland greenhouse region, the port and the business parks strung along the ring. Our Rotterdam city pages cover the districts in detail, and Delft is close enough that guests regularly land at RTM for a morning at the university and fly out the same evening.

The other side of the field

RTM is also a working business aviation airport, and that half of it has nothing to do with the passenger terminal. Private aircraft use separate general aviation facilities with their own apron, handling and entrance, where the walk from aircraft to car is measured in paces. The choreography is different from a scheduled arrival: the schedule comes from the handler rather than a departure board, slots move, and the car needs to be in position before the aircraft is on the ground.

When RTM beats Schiphol, and when it does not

The trade is simple. Schiphol has the network: intercontinental routes, frequencies, connections, and a building designed to move very large numbers of people. RTM has none of that. What it has is speed on the ground, and for a certain kind of trip that is worth more than a wider timetable.

1. Choose RTM when your destination is in the southern Randstad and the route exists. Half an hour saved at each end of a short European hop is most of an afternoon.
2. Choose RTM when you are travelling light and hate airports. The building simply does not have the volume to produce a long queue on an ordinary day.
3. Choose RTM for business aviation into Rotterdam or The Hague; it is a natural base for it and sits far closer to both cities than the alternative.
4. Choose Schiphol for anything intercontinental, for connecting itineraries, and when the destination you need is not on RTM’s board — which, given the size of the place, is often.
5. Choose Schiphol when you are coming from Amsterdam anyway. The transfer from Schiphol is a fixed price and a short drive, and there is no sense adding an hour of motorway to reach a smaller airport.

A note on the drive out

The one thing RTM cannot fix is the A13. It is short, it is busy, and it carries the entire Rotterdam–Delft–The Hague corridor on four lanes. Our chauffeurs plan around it by leaving earlier rather than driving harder, and by knowing when the A4 through Midden-Delfland is the better road to The Hague. That is the quiet part of the job: the airport gives you twenty minutes back, and the point of a chauffeur is not to hand them straight to a traffic jam.

Whatever you fly into, the arrangement at our end is the same one we run everywhere: a fixed price agreed before the car moves, a chauffeur inside the hall rather than a message telling you to find a kerb, and one number to call if anything changes.

Questions, answered

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