We can both come up with sob stories all day. So that old couple sells their house, then what about the young father entering the job market who could afford a cheaper house closer to Amsterdam to commute into work and see his kid more often? The kid loves airplanes and one of their favorite pastimes is watching them come in for landing.

Of course people who don't yet get any benefits from the airport construction aren't vocal about increased investment in its infrastructure, even though collectively they'll be the beneficiaries.

This is a classic example of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs, with the concentrated benefit being the NIMBYs who live near the airport and benefit from the status quo, and the greater diffuse cost being what society at large has to lose from it not being built out.

I'm not familiar with how airport noise regulations work in The Netherlands, but the situation you're describing with Schiphol doesn't sound unreasonable at all.

Unlike a club next door the amount of noise from an airport should be easily predicted based on available data, we know where the planes were at at any given time, and can construct very accurate models of what the noise at any given point on the ground will be.

Why would the council need to show up to do noise measurements only to find that yes, the noise is pretty much exactly the same as what your neighbor next door is experiencing?

If the noise is being systematically underestimated that's another matter, which the courts could presumably sort out, but that they're relying on estimations seems like good policy to me.