Nowadays the main airports throughout the world are suffering because their capacity are getting close to saturation
due to the air traffic which is still increasing besides the economic crisis and oil prices. In addition, the forecasts
predict an increase in air traffic of at least 3.6% until 2020. This situation makes very important to come up with
solutions to alleviate capacity congestions in the main airports throughout the world. Capacity has been perceived
traditionally as the factor to be addressed in airport systems and it is faced through a technical perspective. In this
paper we propose to change the mind-set and view capacity of airport systems taking other factors than pure
technical ones. The discussion is illustrated with the example of Schiphol Airport