KLM will resume most routes this year as vaccine rollouts boost travel, CEO says

KLM said it intends to reinstate almost all of its international routes this year as vaccine rollouts offer hopes of revival for the travel industry. KLM’s president and CEO Pieter Elbers told CNBC the carrier will also add a new route to Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh, even as the capacity and frequency of all flights remain limited. “We do expect to be back in roughly 90-95% of all the destinations we were flying to prior to Covid,” Elbers said Wednesday. “However, we must say there’s going to be less capacity, so the frequency levels will be significantly lower as compared to the situation in 2019.” The speed and extent of that resumption will vary region by region, depending on vaccination rates, he said. Already, the US domestic air travel market has shown strong signs of recovery amid rising vaccination rates, he said. Europe should follow suit as inoculation levels rise, improving the prospects for transatlantic travel too. Asia, however, will be slower to resume. “Clearly, we do expect that the Europe-Asia part will be slower than some of the other recoveries given the very tight regimes in some of the countries when it comes to quarantines or other measures for inbound travel,” said Elbers. Meanwhile in the Middle East, broadly successful vaccine rollouts will see the company commence its new Riyadh route this summer, after postponing those plans last year.<br/>