Originally Posted by 840
Two reasons why CDG has never developed the business traffic of AMS.
One is the flight timings.
AMS allows for flying out in the morning and back in the evenings, even if on different days. This helps keep business costs down, making travel both more practical and keeping rates charged by businesses more competitive.
The second is cultural.
It's a lot easier to work in The Netherlands and Belgium through English.
If you ever travel regularly on the Amsterdam flight, you'll see that there are 20-30 faces that are on the Amsterdam flight every Monday morning. Most work in the Pharmaceutical Consulting and IT Consulting sectors and fly out every week returning on a Thursday or Friday. As we're not known as the greatest polyglots, those opportunities are not as prevalent in France.
The AMS route also seems to get a lot of usage from Kerry Foods. I'm not sure what that's about, but I imagine they must have significant operations in The Netherlands. Thankfully, they don't make so much usage that anyone is laying on a flight to Farranfore!
Your point about timings is spot on. Two flights a day, early and late is fantastic, and I would certainly look to AMS rather than CDG (or even LHR for that matter) if I was flying onwards as well.
From an individual working in Holland/Belgium v France, you're second point is valid. However, from a company sending its employees over point of view, I don't think that is particularly a consideration. That said, I had to fly ORK-AMS-PRG return last month for IT consultant business, and I was surprised at the numbers of construction related passengers who were travelling over for work in Holland. I knew some of them as they worked for PM and others. Another friend of mine spent the last 20 months travelling back and forwards from Cork to Liverpool and Manchester. He's moving onto a Brussels project soon.