Faced with stopping its four weekly flights between Atlanta and Amsterdam or initiating daily flights, KLM decided on the daily flights, which began March 31. But KLM senior vice president Ken Meurer told GlobalFax recently that the airline would decide a year from now whether to continue the flights or not.
“I knew that our alliance partner Northwest was not very much in favor of Atlanta because it might have an effect on their Memphis hub,” Mr. Meurer said after a luncheon of the Netherlands-American Chamber of Commerce. Nevertheless, Mr. Meurer said he asked the KLM board to “give us this entrepreneurial task to make it through one year.”
He added that Georgia’s increasing attractiveness as a tourist destination, Atlanta’s rising international profile and the large amounts of Dutch investments here contributed to KLM’s decision to enter into a code sharing operation with its partner Northwest Airlines with 190 economy and 36 business class seats.
So far the response to the flight has exceeded expectations, according to Phil Crofton, KLM’s sales manager for the Southeast. “Passengers who flew on other carriers are coming back to us because we now fly daily.”
Flight 622 departs Atlanta at 5:10 p.m., arriving in Amsterdam at 7:45 a.m., and flight 621 leaves Amsterdam at 10:35 a.m., arriving in Atlanta at 2:15 p.m.
For more information, Mr. Crofton can be reached at (404) 364-6139.