Thursday, October 7, 2010

KLM to increase YYC flights in Summer 2011 + equipment change

UPDATE: Per the comments below this increase is not happening,  KLM will remain at 5 flights per week for the summer season

Original post:
Thanks to IflyCalgary reader Aaron for alerting me to this airliners.net thread about the changes to KLM's scheduele for 2011. Airline Route Updates has also posted about this and hopefully these planned changes stay true as next summer is still a ways off. Anyways on to the actual news! According to preliminary schedules loaded into the global distribution systems KLM will increase their Calgary-Amsterdam flights in Summer to 6 times weekly from the 5x we saw the past two summers. On top of this the scheduled equipment on the route is now going to be the MD-11 replacing the A330-200 that is currently on the route. Both planes carry almost the same amount of passengers with the MD-11 carrying less in business class and slightly more in economy then the A330. This change is not unique to Calgary as you will see in the thread linked to above it shows that the vast majority of KLM's Canadian routes will be flown with the MD-11.

Overall this is great news for Calgary, it shows that at least in summer this route is working for KLM and they see the demand to increase the number of flights. The traffic in both directions must be quite good particularly with Dutch tourists coming here as the number of Dutch people I see and hear at tourist sites in Calgary and Banff has definitely increased from a few years ago (unscientifically non-statistically speaking of course!)

3 comments:

  1. I think there was a cross-over with the schedule changes. It now looks like it is back to 5 weekly as the departure time has changed to a mid afternoon departure now. However, definitely an MD11 Daily except Mondays and Fridays.

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  2. Yes I just saw that info now, so it remains at 5 days per week.

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  3. since when is an MD-11 an improvement?

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