With the summer holiday period from July through to the end of September, this is traditionally a strong quarter for the airline industry. Borders within Europe gradually opened up for travellers and the Caribbean part of the kingdom was assigned a green or yellow colour code by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Partly as a result of this, KLM welcomed 5.2 million passengers on board last summer, compared to 2.3 million in 2020 and 9.5 million in 2019. Transavia also reflects a positive trend. This shows that recovery has continued across the passenger business. Customers want to travel and the impact of borders opening up is directly visible in the bookings. For next winter, customers will be able to choose from 162 KLM destinations. What’s more, the range of destinations, with more emphasis on leisure, will return to its pre-Covid-19 level.

Cargo continues to perform well. Turnover rose to €467 million, representing an increase of 13%, even though market capacity was up compared to the third quarter of 2020. The maintenance division continued to suffer from the decreasing demand for third-party maintenance. Third-party turnover therefore amounted to €77 million, reflecting a decrease of 22%.