KLM

Just two weeks ago, KLM announced that it would be cutting three of its winter routes between Amsterdam and the United States as the Biden administration continued to do nothing to open up travel for most Europeans and as the Dutch government imposed new restrictions on US travelers. Now, following sudden and unexpected changes of heart by both governments, KLM has announced that two of those three routes will be operated after all...albeit a little later than planned.

With the United States government continuing to show no interest in loosening restrictions on travelers originating in various European countries, we're now seeing some counties in Europe retaliating and imposing considerably stricter measures on travelers visiting from the United States. Unsurprisingly, this is now starting to lead to route suspensions.

Last week, the government of the Netherlands voted to introduce new strict domestic restrictions on the movement of its citizens and, following that announcement, there were strong indications that the national airline, KLM, was set to suspend all international flights from last Friday.

Although it is yet to be confirmed by the airline, it is being widely reported that KLM will temporarily halt all long-haul operations from tomorrow, 22 January 2021, following the introduction of new travel restrictions by the government of the Netherlands.

Barely a day goes by without an airline or airline partnership announcing that it's launching coronavirus testing on one or more of its routes and today is no exception. In recent days American Airlines has announced testing on its routes to Chile and the USVI, United said that it was bringing testing to Houston and now Delta and KLM have said that they will soon offer testing on flights from Atlanta to Amsterdam.

In the last 24 hours, KLM has updated its schedules for winter 2020/21 and when you compare the services the airline plans to offer to the services offered pre-Covid, it doesn't make for pretty reading. Three US cities are set to lose service altogether, while even major partner hubs like Atlanta will be seeing reduced capacity.

KLM has recently updated its worldwide schedules and in the months of August and September, the European carrier will be increasing the number of fights it offers to select cities in the United States with some destinations getting twice as many flights as they're currently seeing.

KLM has updated its Dream Deals Business Class offers for travel between the US to include considerably more routes than the original offer (which is only about a week old) and to reduce the fares on a number of routes by up to $200. There aren't any amazing fares on offer in this set of Dream Deals but the prices do represent a significant saving on what we often see transatlantic Business Class fares costing so this is well worth a closer look.

KLM and Air France are back with a new UK sale (presumably to compete with the British Airways sale that's currently in progress) and with this sale offering deals to North American destinations as well as to destinations in the Caribbean, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, there should be something here for most people.

As big a fan as I am of the Air France 777-300ER Business Class cabin I have to admit that I don't really pay too much attention to the Air France/KLM websites because, historically, I haven't found very much use for it (outside of the times where I found a fare elsewhere and then headed over the site to get the fare ticketed). Well, my lack of interest may have been a little foolish because I just discovered that KLM offers a very useful webpage which lists out all the current Business Class fares on offer for travel out of the United States to Europe, Africa, and India.