KLM Pursues Fleet Renewal After Unveiling Cost-Cut Plan

AMSTERDAM—KLM is pushing ahead with its fleet renewal plans as the airline celebrates its 105th birthday, a few days after announcing a cost-cutting and investment-postponing plan aimed at boosting its profitability.

CEO Marjan Rintel told journalists at a press conference as part of its birthday celebrations in Amsterdam that the airline, which recently received its first two Airbus A321neos, would receive 10 more of the type in 2025.

Referring to the announcement earlier in October that KLM would take steps including postponing investments, and looking at an increase in automation and the possibility of outsourcing some maintenance activities, as well as divesting or discontinuing activities that do not directly contribute to flight operations, Rintel said:

“We are facing strong headwinds. Costs are rising not only in the Netherlands, with the tight labor market, labor costs and inflation but also the supplies, the fuel, if you want to lease new airplanes.”

She said: “We decided we are going to build on the bright future for KLM, and therefore we started a program. We need to reduce our costs, we need to increase productivity. We need still to increase our network capacity mainly on long-haul flights, and we will look at each and every investment. This is all necessary so we can keep investing in our customers.”

The airline is seeing supply chain issues, like other carriers, but expects its aircraft on order to arrive as planned, she said.

“Luckily we ordered the new fleet in time. What we see today is that at least we have the Airbus A321, there are some few months delay, but Airbus is really quite confident still to respect the planning they gave.”

Looking to future fleet decisions, Bas Gerressen, director KLM Netherlands said:

“We will also look at Embraers as well.”

In a recent interview with Luchtvaartnieuws, KLM Cityhopper MD Maarten Koopmans said: “If you consider that the last four E2’s are coming next year, then it makes sense to look at what you want to do in 2026 and 2027. That is why we are making the plans now, because there is a year between making a decision and delivering.”

The airline said at the time that nothing was decided or confirmed but it was exploring all opportunities.

Asked about whether the airline would increase frequencies to China in the short term, Gerressen said the situation was difficult, with the need to avoid Russian airspace resulting in extra pilots.

“It’s a very costly operation right now. And at the same time, the economy in China is also a bit struggling, and the demand from China to Europe is not as good as it can be. So, we ensure that we have a good network to China, to Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, but at this moment in time we will not expand our network. But of course, if things are changing, we will be there.”

The airline is still awaiting the result of the balanced approach procedure, the EU process member states have to follow if they want to reduce noise at an airport, following a months-long debate over government plans to limit flight movements to reduce noise at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport.

A proposal submitted by the Netherlands government that would see a 475,000-485,000 flight movement limit is being evaluated and the result may come in the next months, Rintel and Gerressen said, although there is no precise date.

Referring to Dutch government plans to impose an extra tax on long-haul flights, Rintel said: “This tax is not helping sustainability, it’s only pushing people from the Netherlands to Brussels Airport, Frankfurt or Dusseldorf by car for example, which we don’t think is the best idea and certainly not helping to achieve sustainability goals. We see a lot of taxation coming from the Green Deal, from Europe, what we underline is that it’s better, not only to do it at European level, but for the world.”