At the end of Saturday afternoon, 4 June, KLM was regrettably compelled to decide that passengers at European destinations would no longer be allowed to board flights to Amsterdam. Although a substantial package of measures was taken before the weekend, KLM has faced unforeseen and urgent circumstances that are beyond its control. Due to unfavourable weather conditions and runway maintenance at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, many aircraft couldn’t land or take off in Amsterdam.
This means a large number of KLM flights on Saturday were delayed or even cancelled. The number of passengers who were unable to depart from Amsterdam due to these external factors has increased sharply.
To ensure safe and workable operations at Schiphol for passengers and crew, KLM took the far-reaching decision that no further passengers would be brought to Amsterdam. This decision was taken to ensure that as many stranded passengers as possible can depart from Schiphol on Saturday and that KLM can operate as many flights as possible on Sunday.
Rene de Groot - Chief Operating Officer said: "It’s incredibly unfortunate that on top of everything else today, we’re also dealing with reduced runway capacity at Schiphol as a result of unfavourable winds and runway maintenance. Despite intervening earlier to ensure workable operations this weekend, today has been another extremely difficult day for our passengers and crew. We are apologizing to our customers for the inconvenience and doing our utmost to ensure that we can return to workable operations as swiftly as possible.”
The decision to stop bringing passengers from European destinations to or via Amsterdam remained in force for the whole of Saturday. Looking at the current weather forecasts, KLM does not expect to continue stopping passengers flying from European destinations into Amsterdam on Sunday and expects to run the operation as planned.
KLM offers its sincere apologies to passengers who were unable to travel to Amsterdam from certain European destinations, as well as those who were unable to transfer via Amsterdam to other final destinations.
We understand that this decision has great impact on passengers, particularly during the Whit Monday weekend. KLM would like to stress that it is doing its utmost to offer passengers alternative flights as quickly as possible.
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