NEW YORK – Travel rules for who is coming from the USA to the Netherlands are going to change (again), and this time things are not going in the right direction.
Starting September 6th, on top of the mandatory Green Pass or 48hrs old PCR Test, passengers have to go to a mandatory quarantine at home for 10 days. This quarantine can be reduced after a PCR test is done after 5 days (more info at this link in Dutch)
So far this can sound like a piece of standard information but there is more and this will have an impact on the Dutch national airline KLM.
Re-building a network.
In a pandemic world, airlines are struggling more than usual in re-building their network of destinations with Covid-free flights, travel bubbles, and Green pass. KLM posted their Q2 report with 3.7 million passengers carried in the first 6 months of the year. The number is anyway low compared to the year before where Royal Dutch Airlines transported 6.7 million passengers.
Despite that, the KLM’s CEO confirmed an optimistic view on July 30th, 2021: “Our results for the first half of 2021 are rather chequered, but the first signs of recovery are becoming clear”.
With these premises, the Amsterdam-based company started to add more and more flights specifically to North America helping Delta increasing its codeshare network while keeping a dominant position compared to United and American Airlines at Schiphol airport. Cities like Miami, Orlando, Las Vegas were added in July to the usual network that ranged multiple cities on the East coast (e.g. New York, Atlanta, Detroit, …) and the West coast (e.g. Los Angeles, San Francisco).
The impact
With a non-bilateral entry policy where US-citizen are allowed to enter Europe, while European ones are still denied at the US borders, the recent Dutch government decision penalizes even more KLM’s network growth.
The 10-days quarantine will not only reduce the number of passengers flying from the US to Amsterdam, but it has already brought KLM to cancel its Miami, Orland, and Las Vegas routes planned for this winter (read the statement here).
The non-sense
The Dutch airline didn’t like the Government’s decision affirming that measures also during this new Covid reality needs to be “effective and proportionate”.
As matter of fact, the word “proportionate” should be the one leading Government’s decisions. Also because there are always ways to bypass rules.
Creative passengers, who want to come to Amsterdam, can just land in Brussels, Dusseldorf, or Frankfurt, rent a car and drive to the Netherlands without any border control. This with the happiness of other carriers such as Lufthansa or Brussels Airlines and the tears of KLM and Delta who will not only see a reduction of routes/codeshare routs but also a drop in passengers on their flights to the Dutch capital.
Bottom line
It is clear that the decision doesn’t benefit the SkyTeam duo, but still, a question remains: could this be a tactic move of the Dutch Government to push for a re-open of the US borders for those who have a Green Pass?
We don’t know that, but the hope is there, otherwise, this is another tough pill to swallow for the Air France/KLM group.
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