We fully understand the dissatisfaction felt by passengers who were on our flights from Cape Town and Johannesburg last Friday. KLM was taken by surprise on Friday morning by sudden changes to travel restrictions that were imposed when the flights were already in the air and on their way to the Netherlands.

We regret that, largely due to factors beyond our control, our passengers were not informed about procedures and had to wait on board the aircraft for several hours. This meant that they did not receive the customer-friendly care they should be able to expect from us. We want to prevent this from happening again, which is why we want to sit down with the GGD municipal health authority and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol to learn from this event and to improve procedures for our passengers.

We would like to offer our sincere apologies to all our passengers who were affected by this turn of events and would be happy to discuss what happened with them.