Air France KLM to increase Capacity to Asia by 7.3% in Summer Schedule 2007

For the summer 2007 season, the Air France KLM Group will be increasing capacity by 5.4% compared with last summer, up 5.6% on the long-haul network and 4.3% on the medium-haul network. The summer schedule will start on March 25 and end on October 27.

Both airlines will significantly grow capacity to long-haul destinations, particularly to Latin America (up 11.4%) and Asia (up 7.3%). Capacity to North America will also increase (up 10.1%). Meanwhile capacity to Africa will go up, but to a lesser extent (up 3.1%). On the other hand, capacity to the Middle East and the French Caribbean and Indian Ocean networks will undergo the usual seasonal adjustments.

On the medium-haul network, KLM is reinforcing its 7th connecting bank at the Amsterdam hub introduced last summer, by increasing flight frequencies to Eastern and Northern Europe. At the same time, Air France is boosting capacity, mainly to North African destinations.

Transatlantic expansion with Northwest

Through its successful transatlantic joint venture with Northwest Airlines KLM will drastically increase the number of destinations and flight frequencies on the transatlantic routes. In total KLM will increase capacity on these routes by 15.2%.

New flights will be introduced between Amsterdam and Hartford (Conn., USA), between Detroit and Brussels and between Detroit and Düsseldorf. Also Northwest will double the number of flights between Detroit and Frankfurt to a twice daily service. All of these new flights will be operated with Northwest’s Boeing 757 aircraft in a special transatlantic two-class configuration.

Frequencies will be increased on flights from Amsterdam to Detroit, Boston, Los Angeles and Toronto. The increases on Los Angeles and Boston include an early morning departure from Amsterdam, offering a good connection for passengers arriving from the Middle East, Africa and India. Furthermore, capacity will be increased on flights to San Francisco by change of equipment to a Boeing 747-400.

Emerging markets

KLM and Air France continue their policy of growing the number of destinations and the amount of capacity in emerging markets China, India and South America.

The number of weekly KLM return flights to China will increase to 34, including seven code share flights with partner China Southern between Amsterdam and Beijing/Guangzhou. This is the third consecutive season that KLM will expand the flight frequency to China. Together with Air France the weekly number of flights to China will expand to 69.

In South America, KLM will link Lima nonstop to Amsterdam with six weekly flights, operated with Boeing 777-200ER equipment, and a 6th frequency will be added to Quito/Quayaquil.

In India KLM will add one extra frequency to Hyderabad, going to five flights per week. The flight frequency of KLM, Air France and Northwest to India will be 43 weekly return flights to Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai.

In total KLM will grow 7.4% in capacity on routes to Asia and 3.7% to Central and South America.

Europe

This summer, KLM will expand the number of daily frequencies to European destinations, including Barcelona, Moscow, Stavanger and Tallinn. For Moscow this means that KLM will operate together with SkyTeam partner Aeroflot three return flights daily between Amsterdam and the Russian capital.

The flight expansion is part of the further roll out of the seven wave system that was introduced last summer and will give passengers more flight options and better connections between incoming and outgoing flights.

Next to this, KLM and Air France will balance capacity on flights from Amsterdam to Paris and to Lyon. KLM will take over three daily flight operations between Amsterdam and Paris and Air France will take over from KLM three flight operations between Amsterdam and Lyon. The schedules and total number of frequencies remain unchanged. In total, eight cities in France are connected to Amsterdam.

The capacity on KLM’s medium-haul network will grow in total with 4.5%.

Fleet 

At the start of the summer season KLM has finalized an important part of its fleet renewal program by having all Boeing 767-300ER’s replaced by new Airbus 330-200s. Also, the first phase of the MD-11 interior modification has been concluded. Now all the economy-class seats have been replaced with new seats. The newly configured MD-11 contains more Economy Class seats and less Business Class seats. The second part of the cabin upgrade, which will begin in the fall of 2007, will entail replacing the current Business Class seats with new lie-flat seats and installing the same inflight entertainment system as on the Airbus 330-200 and Boeing 777-200.

All flights to the Dutch Antilles and Aruba will be operated standard with MD-11 equipment.

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