Αεροπορικές μεταφορές προς την Ευρώπη: Φρανκφούρτη, Λιέγη ή Άμστερνταμ — Ποιο Hub κερδίζει;

 

 

Εισαγωγή

Every shipper moving goods by air from China to Europe eventually faces the same question, and it usually arrives at the worst possible moment: the booking is confirmed, the cargo is ready, and someone asks which airport it should land at. For most of the past decade the answer was reflexive. Frankfurt for anything high-value or time-critical, Amsterdam for cargo that needed to reach the Benelux or the UK by morning, and Liege if you were an e-commerce seller with a lot of light parcels. That shorthand still contains a surprising amount of truth, but 2026 has bent it in several directions at once.

Three forces are reshaping the decision. Capacity is tight and uneven: the Middle East disruption in March scrambled routings and pushed rates up, and then summer belly capacity softened Europe-bound pricing again. Slot politics at Schiphol have moved from a background irritation to a genuine planning constraint for freighter operators. And since 1 July 2026, the EU’s flat customs duty on low-value parcels has changed the economics of the very e-commerce flows that powered Liege’s recent growth.

This guide compares the three gateways on operations, inland reach, cost structure, customs handling and cargo fit, using the most recent published traffic data we could find, and it closes with a practical framework you can apply to your own freight. It is written for importers, cross-border sellers and procurement teams who either buy air freight from a forwarder or want to brief one more sharply. Where the honest answer is “it depends”, we say what it depends on.

The 2026 Backdrop: Why the Hub Decision Is Harder Than It Used to Be

Capacity, rates and the Middle East shock

The first quarter of 2026 was a reminder of how quickly air cargo geography can change. When the Middle East conflict flared in March, Gulf carriers and the one-stop routings through the region suddenly became unreliable, and the effect showed up immediately in European hub statistics. Amsterdam Schiphol reported that its March cargo tonnage slipped 3 percent year on year and that flows to the Middle East roughly halved. At the same time, the global Baltic Air Freight Index published by TAC Index jumped 9.3 percent in a single week to 30 March, leaving it about 10 percent above the prior year.

By midsummer the picture had flipped. The same index fell for five consecutive weeks to 27 July, although it still sat about 16.8 percent above a year earlier. TAC attributed the softness to extra passenger belly capacity during the holiday season and to carriers being better prepared for disruption after the March shocks. Spot rates from Hong Kong, Shanghai and India strengthened on transpacific lanes but declined on services to Europe. In other words, a shipper booking Asia to Europe in August paid less than one booking in April, even though the year-on-year comparison still looked expensive.

The lesson for hub selection is that a rate snapshot is a poor foundation for a routing decision. Rates move weekly, while the structural differences between Frankfurt, Liege and Amsterdam, such as night operations, slot rules, belly-to-freighter mix and road network access, persist for years. The sensible approach is to choose the hub on structure and then negotiate rates within that structure.

The 1 July parcel duty and what it did to e-commerce flows

The second shift is regulatory. From 1 July 2026 the EU ended the long-standing duty exemption for parcels valued at €150 or less and replaced it with an interim flat customs duty of €3 per distinct item category, defined by tariff sub-heading, in each parcel. The interim regime is scheduled to run until 1 July 2028 and may be extended, with a central EU Customs Data Hub expected around 2028. From 1 November 2026 customs authorities will also require a product identifier on these consignments, which can be supplied voluntarily from the July start.

The scale of what is being regulated explains the urgency. The European Commission has reported that roughly 4.67 billion low-value parcels entered the EU in 2024, with about 91 percent originating in China, and low-value imports kept climbing in 2025. Air freight carried a large share of that traffic, so any structural change in parcel economics lands directly on the hubs that handle it.

Early signals suggest the effect is real. Air Cargo Belgium said it had already seen an intentional contraction in low-value parcel volumes entering the EU, and an analysis of French data reported that small-parcel customs declarations at Paris Charles de Gaulle had fallen 92 percent by early March, as flows shifted to member states where no national levy existed and were then trucked onward. A patchwork of national measures, including a small parcel tax in France and a handling fee in Italy, adds further noise. Liege Airport itself said in its first-half report that it was too early to judge the duty’s impact on cargo flows. For anyone shipping parcel-type e-commerce, this is the single biggest variable in the Liege question, and we return to it below.

Frankfurt (FRA): The Premium Generalist

Frankfurt is the incumbent. It is the home hub of Lufthansa Cargo, it receives belly capacity from a large number of long-haul passenger airlines, and it sits in the middle of Germany’s industrial economy. Fraport’s monthly figures show a hub that grows slowly but steadily rather than spectacularly. Cargo throughput, which combines airfreight and airmail, reached 150,044 tonnes in January, 185,486 tonnes in March, 180,622 tonnes in July and 179,400 tonnes in August 2026. Year-on-year growth was 1.2 percent in January, 0.4 percent in March, 0.9 percent in July and 2.9 percent in August.

The August number deserves a second look. Frankfurt moved 2.9 percent more cargo while aircraft movements fell 4.6 percent and maximum take-off weights fell 1.6 percent. That pattern, more tonnes per flight, is typical of a mature hub that is constrained by runway and noise rules and compensates through load factors and larger aircraft. It also tells you something about service: Frankfurt is not chasing volume at any price, and its handlers and airlines prioritise the cargo that pays best, such as pharmaceuticals, high-value machinery components and time-definite express freight.

Where Frankfurt wins

Frankfurt’s greatest strength is breadth of connectivity. A shipper moving freight from southern China will usually find more direct and one-stop options into Frankfurt than into either of the other two hubs, which matters when a flight is cancelled or a cut-off is missed. Rebooking onto the next departure is easier when many carriers serve the same airport. The hub also has deep experience with regulated and sensitive cargo, including temperature-controlled pharmaceuticals, επικίνδυνα αγαθά and high-value shipments that need secure handling.

The second advantage is the German inland market itself. Germany is the largest consumer economy in the EU, and Frankfurt sits within a day’s truck drive of most of it, as well as of Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic and eastern France. For automotive suppliers, machinery importers and industrial buyers whose end customers are in the south and centre of the continent, landing in Frankfurt removes a long road leg.

Where Frankfurt frustrates

The trade-offs are equally clear. Frankfurt operates under a night flight restriction between roughly 11 pm and 5 am, with limited exceptions, which limits the late-night freighter waves that Liege is built around. Handling and terminal fees tend to be at the premium end, and congestion at peak times can stretch dwell time at the airport, especially around the autumn peak when pharmaceutical, electronics and holiday e-commerce volumes overlap. Truckers also face urban traffic around the Rhine-Main area, and a missed trucking window can cost half a day.

Frankfurt is also a more demanding place for low-density, low-value cargo. When space is tight, the hub’s ecosystem tends to favour higher-yield freight, so a shipper of light parcels or low-margin consumer goods may find allocation less forgiving than at a hub designed around e-commerce.

Liege (LGG): The Freighter and E-Commerce Specialist

Liege Airport in eastern Belgium is the story of the decade in European air cargo. It has built a business model almost entirely around full freighters and express integrators, and its pitch is simple: operations around the clock, no practical curfew, no slot cap that squeezes cargo operators, and priority for freighter flights. Alibaba’s logistics arm Cainiao selected Liege as a European hub for its global delivery network, and a large e-commerce distribution campus has grown up around the airport.

The numbers show how fast it has grown. Liege handled 219,807 tonnes in January and February 2026, up 18.6 percent on the same two months of 2025. For the first half it reported 697,816 tonnes, up 11.3 percent, with cargo aircraft movements rising a slower 3.3 percent to 14,354. Exports jumped 19 percent, led by Asia and North America. The airport’s chief executive said the gap between tonnage and movement growth reflects efficiency gains across the airport ecosystem, and it also suggests larger aircraft and better-filled flights.

Where Liege wins

For freighter-heavy flows, Liege is hard to beat. A carrier that wants to operate a late-night arrival, rotate an aircraft quickly or add an ad hoc flight does not have to negotiate for a scarce slot, which is exactly the situation that Schiphol’s freighter operators complain about. Ground handling is built around quick turnarounds, and the airport’s compact layout means trucks can load and leave quickly. For e-commerce shippers, consolidated lines from China into Liege have historically offered some of the most competitive per-kilo pricing into Europe.

Its geography is also underrated. Liege sits close to the Belgian, Dutch and German borders, within a short drive of the Rhine-Ruhr region, and within reach of Paris, Brussels, Antwerp and Cologne by road. Maastricht Airport, a short distance away, serves as overflow capacity and is promoted by Schiphol as its seventh runway, so the broader region has more air cargo infrastructure than the single airport suggests.

Where Liege is exposed

Liege’s weakness is concentration. A large share of its growth is tied to Chinese e-commerce platforms and integrators, and the 1 July duty change hits exactly that category. If low-value parcel volumes continue to contract, or if platforms re-route flows to hubs in member states that benefit from different national rules, Liege has less insulation than diversified hubs like Frankfurt. The first-half numbers, which ended on 30 June, predate the duty’s effect, so shippers should watch the third-quarter figures closely before assuming the growth trend is intact.

Belly capacity is the second limitation. Because Liege is a freighter hub, it offers few passenger-flight options, so when freighter schedules are disrupted there are fewer rebooking alternatives. A shipper with a delicate supply chain should plan for this by agreeing a fallback hub with its forwarder before the problem occurs, not after.

Amsterdam Schiphol (AMS): Excellent Connections, Hard Limits

Amsterdam Schiphol is the third-largest cargo airport in Europe by tonnage and one of the best-connected in the world. It has strong belly capacity from KLM and partners, a dense network of cargo handlers and forwarders, and some of the best truck-and-rail links in the Netherlands, Belgium and the northern part of Germany. It also has a fast and mature customs environment, with a track record in managing high-value shipments, fresh produce, flowers and pharmaceuticals.

First-quarter 2026 data illustrate the mix. Schiphol handled 361,829 tonnes in the first quarter, up 5 percent, even though March fell 3 percent to 128,281 tonnes because of the Middle East disruption. In March the split was 41 percent belly and 59 percent full freighter, with freighters gaining three percentage points on the prior year. Road feeder services, meaning cargo moved by truck under an air waybill to or from other airports, handled 42,132 tonnes, nearly a quarter of total volume. Typical commodities included electrical machinery, flowers, fashion, fruit and vegetables, pharmaceuticals, fish and spare parts.

The slot problem

Schiphol’s defining constraint is a cap of 500,000 annual air traffic movements, which forces every airline to compete for scarce slots. Passenger carriers hold the bulk of them, and freighters account for only about 2.5 percent of flights. Under standard slot rules, an airline must use at least 80 percent of a series of slots or risk losing it, which is easy for a scheduled passenger service but awkward for a freighter operator whose flying pattern follows cargo demand. Airlines swapping freighter slots for passenger slots has been a recurring complaint from the cargo community, and Dutch trade bodies have lobbied for a ring-fenced pool of freighter slots.

There is some movement. Airport Coordination Netherlands will introduce a new procedure from the Winter 2026 scheduling season under which returned slots are redistributed before the start of each season, which the logistics association evofenedex believes could create more room for cargo flights within the existing movement limit. That is helpful but does not remove the cap, so any freighter operator weighing a long-term schedule at Amsterdam still has to accept more uncertainty than at Liege.

For shippers, the practical impact is uneven. If your cargo travels in the belly of a KLM or partner widebody, the slot issue is invisible to you. If your cargo depends on a dedicated freighter charter, or on a carrier that does not hold historical slots, it can become a reason for delays, higher prices or a reroute through Liege or Maastricht.

Head-to-Head: How the Three Hubs Compare

Traffic and positioning at a glance

The table below summarises the published 2026 data points for each airport. The periods differ because the airports report on different schedules, so the figures should be read as indicators of positioning rather than a like-for-like ranking.

Μετρικός	Φρανκφούρτη (FRA)	Λιέγη (LGG)	Άμστερνταμ (AMS)
Latest reported cargo volume	179,400 t in August 2026 (+2.9% YoY)	697,816 t in H1 2026 (+11.3% YoY)	361,829 t in Q1 2026 (+5% YoY)
Πρόσφατη δυναμική	Steady, low single-digit growth	Strong double-digit growth, export-led	Moderate growth, March dip from Middle East disruption
Cargo model	Belly plus freighter, Lufthansa Cargo hub	Predominantly freighters and e-commerce integrators	Belly and freighter mix (59% freighter in March)
Main structural constraint	Night flight restrictions, premium pricing	Concentration in Asia e-commerce flows	500,000 annual movement cap and slot scarcity
Τυπικό γλυκό σημείο	Pharma, industrial, high-value, southern and central Europe	E-commerce, express, bulk freighter flows, northwest and central Europe	Perishables, flowers, pharma, Benelux and UK-bound cargo

 

Operations, flexibility and risk

Beyond volume, the operational characteristics are what usually decide a booking. Frankfurt offers the most diverse set of carriers and the strongest rebooking resilience but constrains night operations. Liege offers the greatest operational flexibility for freighters but limited belly alternatives. Amsterdam offers excellent connections and fast customs for the Benelux, with slot scarcity as the long-term risk to freighter capacity.

Παράγοντας	Φρανκφούρτη	Προθυμώς	Άμστερνταμ
Νυχτερινές λειτουργίες	Restricted between roughly 11 pm and 5 am	Operates around the clock	Constrained by noise and movement limits
Slot availability for freighters	Moderate, subject to hub capacity	Open, no slot cap for cargo operators	Scarce, a major planning issue
Rebooking options if a flight fails	Excellent, many carriers	Limited, mostly freighters	Good, but slot limits can narrow ad hoc additions
Handling cost level	Ανώτερο	Ανταγωνιστικός	Μεσαία έως premium
Sensitive cargo expertise	Πολύ ισχυρή	Growing, mainly integrators and e-commerce	Very strong for perishables and pharma
Exposure to e-commerce duty changes	Χαμηλή έως μέτρια	Ψηλά	Χαμηλή έως μέτρια

 

Inland reach and the true cost of the last leg

A cheaper airport rate is meaningless if the truck leg wipes out the saving. The most reliable way to compare hubs is to start from the final delivery location and work backward. The approximate road times below assume normal traffic and are intended as a planning guide only, because border waits, driver-hour rules and weather can change them quickly.

Τελικός προορισμός	Από τη Φρανκφούρτη	From Liege	Από το Άμστερνταμ
Munich / southern Germany	Σχετικά με τις ώρες 4	Σχετικά με τις ώρες 6	Σχετικά με τις ώρες 7
Cologne / Rhine-Ruhr	Σχετικά με τις ώρες 2	Σχετικά με τις ώρες 1.5	Σχετικά με τις ώρες 3
Παρίσι	Σχετικά με τις ώρες 6	Σχετικά με τις ώρες 4	Σχετικά με τις ώρες 5.5
Brussels / Antwerp	Σχετικά με τις ώρες 5	Περίπου 1.5 με 2 ώρες	Περίπου 2.5 με 3 ώρες
Άμστερνταμ / Ρότερνταμ	Σχετικά με τις ώρες 4.5	Σχετικά με τις ώρες 3	Κάτω από 1 ώρα
Milan / northern Italy	Σχετικά με τις ώρες 8	Σχετικά με τις ώρες 9	Σχετικά με τις ώρες 10

 

The pattern is intuitive but worth stating plainly. Frankfurt shortens every route into southern and central Europe, Liege is the natural fit for Belgium, northern France and the Rhine-Ruhr, and Amsterdam is strongest for the Netherlands and for northern routes. A buyer whose customers are spread evenly across the continent will need to think about whether a single hub plus a warehouse network beats a multi-hub strategy.

Matching the Hub to the Cargo

Cargo type is where the choice becomes most concrete. Dense, high-value freight such as electronic components and machinery spare parts tends to be best served where airline choice is greatest, which points to Frankfurt or Amsterdam. Light and voluminous consumer goods, which are charged on volumetric weight, often benefit from a freighter hub with lower handling cost, which points to Liege. Perishables depend on cold chain infrastructure and speed to market, an area where Amsterdam’s flower and produce ecosystem is hard to match.

Τύπος φορτίου	Καλύτερη εφαρμογή	Γιατί	Πρόσεχε για
Φαρμακευτικά προϊόντα και υγειονομική περίθαλψη	Frankfurt or Amsterdam	Certified cold chain handlers and many belly flights	Premium handling fees, temperature excursion risk during truck legs
Ηλεκτρονικά και εξαρτήματα υψηλής αξίας	Φρανκφούρτη	Airline choice, secure handling, German industrial market	Peak-season congestion, strict cut-off times
Parcel-based e-commerce (B2C)	Προθυμώς	Freighter capacity, integrator presence, cost efficiency	New €3 duty and product identifier from 1 November
Palletised e-commerce replenishment (B2B stock)	Liege or Amsterdam	Good consolidation, easy road links to fulfilment centres	Choice depends on the warehouse region
Perishables and flowers	Άμστερνταμ	Cold chain ecosystem and fast customs	Slot scarcity for freighters in peak
Industrial spare parts and AOG-type urgency	Φρανκφούρτη	Maximum frequency and rebooking options	Υψηλότερο κόστος ανά κιλό

 

Two notes on this table. First, the “best fit” is a starting point, not a verdict. A pharmaceutical shipper whose warehouse is in Belgium may find Liege or Amsterdam more efficient than Frankfurt despite the latter’s reputation. Second, the B2C parcel row has shifted since July. Before this year the answer was almost automatic, but a flat duty per item category, plus national fees in some countries, now makes the declared content of each parcel matter far more than the airport it lands at.

Customs, VAT and Compliance Across the Three Hubs

Air freight into Europe is not complete until the goods have cleared customs, and the hub you choose often influences who clears them, where, and how quickly. Customs rules are harmonised across the EU, but practice differs, and each member state has its own VAT treatment, its own broker market and its own enforcement style. This matters because airport dwell time is expensive, and a missing document can cost more than the original freight rate.

The most important distinction is between clearing at the hub and moving the goods onward under a transit procedure to be cleared closer to the final destination. Clearing at the hub is simplest when the consignee or the importer of record is in the same country, and it keeps the process under one set of customs officers. Transiting onward is useful when the end customer is in another member state, but it adds guarantee requirements and can add delay if the arrival is not properly tracked and closed.

VAT adds another layer. Both the Netherlands and Belgium have established import VAT deferral mechanisms for approved importers, which can improve cash flow by postponing the payment of import VAT to the periodic return, while Germany handles import VAT through its own arrangements. The details change and depend on the importer’s registration and status, so a seller should confirm the position with a licensed customs broker and a tax adviser before building a routing strategy around it. For B2C e-commerce, the IOSS scheme remains relevant for consignments up to €150, and from 1 November 2026 the product identifier requirement will make accurate data entry more important than ever.

A final practical point concerns data quality. The 1 July regime calculates the duty from the customs declaration, which means a vague description, a wrong tariff code or an inconsistent item count can change the amount owed or trigger an inspection. Because the duty is charged per item category, a parcel with four different product types attracts four times the base amount of one containing a single type. Shippers should therefore invest in clean product data upstream, whichever hub they choose.

Beyond the Airport: Road Feeder Services, Warehousing and the Last Mile

Choosing a hub is really choosing the first half of a delivery chain, and the second half often costs more than people expect. Once the airline releases the shipment, the cargo has to be cleared, de-consolidated, stored, sorted and delivered. If the airport is not close to your customers, you need to move the freight by truck, and the trucking market in Europe is tighter, more regulated and more expensive than many importers assume.

Road feeder services are an important tool here. Schiphol’s own statistics show that nearly a quarter of its cargo volume moves by truck under an air waybill, and large forwarders routinely use the same approach, flying into the cheapest or best-connected hub and trucking to the final airport or warehouse. A shipment flown to Liege and trucked to a distribution centre near Paris, or flown to Frankfurt and trucked to northern Italy, can sometimes deliver a better balance of cost and speed than a direct flight to a closer but more expensive airport.

Warehouse location matters as much as airport choice. A buyer that fulfils across Europe from one warehouse in the Netherlands, Belgium or western Germany can pair that facility with whichever hub offers the best uplift at the time of shipping, because all three airports are within a few hours of that central region. A buyer who instead needs next-day delivery in several countries may need more than one fulfilment node and should plan flows accordingly.

The last mile is the final variable. Carrier networks, delivery windows, returns handling and local regulations differ by country, and a hub that is perfect for the air leg may be poorly matched to the delivery network that serves your customers. The right way to evaluate a hub is to examine the whole chain from loading in China to the customer’s doorstep.

How Topway Shipping Fits Into Your Hub Strategy

Since 2010, Topway Shipping, headquartered in Shenzhen, China, has been a professional provider of cross-border e-commerce logistics solutions. Our founding team has more than 15 years of experience in international logistics and customs clearance, with a strong focus on China-U.S. transportation, and that background shapes how we think about European routings: the best hub is the one that fits the whole chain, not the one with the lowest headline rate.

Our services span the entire logistics chain, including first-leg transportation, overseas warehousing, customs clearance and last-mile delivery. In practice, that means we can plan the movement from the factory or consolidation point in China, align it with the right gateway and customs approach, position stock in an overseas warehouse where it makes commercial sense, and manage the final delivery to the customer. For a seller who is weighing Frankfurt against Liege or Amsterdam, this end-to-end view is more useful than a quote that stops at the airport.

Topway Shipping also offers flexible full-container-load and less-than-container-load ocean freight from China to major ports worldwide, which is a valuable complement to air. Many of our customers do not choose between air and sea for every product but instead split their shipments: they send fast-moving or urgent SKUs by air to cover demand spikes and send bulk replenishment by ocean to keep the average landed cost down. Because that decision interacts with hub choice, warehouse location and customs strategy, we treat it as one planning exercise instead of three separate bookings.

If you are unsure which gateway suits your cargo, a useful starting point is to share your product categories, typical shipment sizes, declared values and delivery destinations with our team. We can help you compare the options against the realities of your supply chain, including the new €3 duty, the incoming product identifier rule and the seasonal capacity picture, and then build a routing plan you can test with a pilot shipment before committing to volume.

A Practical Framework for Choosing Your Hub

With the facts laid out, the decision can be made methodically. Start with the destination, because road distance is the most stable cost variable. Map your customers or your fulfilment centres, identify where most of the volume lands, and note which hub is closest. If more than half of your volume goes to southern and central Germany, Switzerland, Austria or the Czech Republic, Frankfurt starts with a structural advantage. If it goes to Belgium, northern France or the Rhine-Ruhr, Liege does. If it goes to the Netherlands, the UK or the Nordics, Amsterdam does.

Next, assess your cargo profile. Is it dense or light, regulated or ordinary, planned or urgent? Time-critical and high-value freight benefits from the deep schedule at Frankfurt and Amsterdam, and the ability to rebook quickly can be worth a higher rate. Light consumer goods and large e-commerce volumes often benefit from the dedicated freighter capacity at Liege, provided the regulatory picture for your product category remains workable after 1 July.

Third, think about resilience. Even the best-matched hub will occasionally have a bad week, whether from weather, strikes, congestion or an airline schedule change. Agree a fallback with your forwarder in advance, ideally a second hub within a few hours’ drive. Liege and Maastricht, Frankfurt and a nearby airport, or Amsterdam and Liege with a road feeder service, are all workable pairings. Having a pre-agreed alternative turns a crisis into a routine rebooking.

Finally, test before you commit. Run a pilot of a few shipments through two hubs, compare total landed cost and transit time to the final customer, and measure dwell time, damage and customs queries. The differences are often smaller or larger than expected, and real data from your own cargo beats any general guidance, including this article.

Συμπέρασμα

There is no single winner, and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably selling a particular airport. Frankfurt wins on connectivity, sensitive cargo and access to southern and central Europe, but costs more and restricts night operations. Liege wins on freighter flexibility, around-the-clock operation and e-commerce economics, but carries real exposure to the EU’s new low-value parcel rules and offers few alternatives when a freighter schedule fails. Amsterdam wins on perishables, belly connectivity and the Benelux and northern markets, but its slot cap makes dedicated freighter capacity harder to plan around.

The more useful question is which hub wins for your freight. Start from the destination, match the cargo profile, plan a fallback and test with real shipments, and revisit the decision each season, because rates, slot rules and customs policy are all changing. Topway Shipping can help you work through that decision as part of a complete China-to-Europe chain that includes first-leg transport, customs clearance, overseas warehousing and last-mile delivery, along with ocean freight options when speed is less critical than cost.

Συχνές Ερωτήσεις

Q: Which hub is cheapest for air freight from China to Europe?

A: It depends on cargo type and destination. Liege is often competitive for light e-commerce freight because of its freighter focus, while Frankfurt and Amsterdam can be better value for high-value cargo that needs strong schedules. Always compare the total landed cost including the truck leg and customs fees.

Q: Is Liege still a good choice after the 1 July parcel duty?

A: For palletised B2B freight and freighter-based flows, yes. For low-value B2C parcels, the new €3 duty per item category and the product identifier requirement from 1 November 2026 raise costs wherever the parcel lands, so the declared content matters more than the airport.

Q: Does the Schiphol slot cap affect every shipment?

A: No. Cargo travelling in the belly of passenger flights is largely unaffected. The cap mainly affects dedicated freighters, which hold only a small share of slots and can struggle to keep them under the 80 percent usage rule.

Q: Should I use more than one hub?

A: Many shippers do. A primary hub matched to your main destinations plus a pre-agreed backup within a few hours’ drive reduces the impact of disruption without adding much complexity.

Q: Can Topway Shipping manage the whole route from China to the European customer?

A: Yes. Topway Shipping covers first-leg transportation, overseas warehousing, customs clearance and last-mile delivery, and also offers FCL and LCL ocean freight, so air and sea can be planned together.