With just over a month to go until its summer schedule commences, KLM has revealed its network plans for the high season. The Dutch flag carrier has increased its capacity compared to last year, bringing it ever closer to achieving the levels seen prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Let's crunch the figures.

By the numbers 

The primary headline from the announcement circulated by the national airline of the Netherlands concerning its summer network is the fact that it will serve a grand total of 155 destinations in the coming season. Just under 60% of these are short-haul routes within Europe, with KLM's home continent accounting for 92.

Meanwhile, the remaining 63 destinations that the Dutch flag carrier plans to serve from its primary hub at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport (AMS) over the coming summer are of an intercontinental nature. All in all, KLM's summer schedule, which is set to run from March 31st to October 26th, offers 7% more capacity than last year.

According to KLM, this increase means that its present summer capacity is now "almost matching pre-COVID levels." As it happens, certain parts of its network have recovered so strongly that their capacity has already exceeded this milestone. Most notably, the airline's flights to North America now have more capacity than in 2019.

Frequency increases across the board 

Looking at the airline's summer schedule as a whole, data made available by Cirium, an aviation analytics company, shows that KLM has scheduled 154,030 flights between March 31st and October 26th this year. These will offer 24,203,287 seats (at an average of 157 per departure), and 40,576,750,294 available seat miles.

On an individual level, KLM has increased its capacity on an interesting variety of routes. In terms of long-haul services, this includes the resumption of direct flights to Osaka and daily flights to Tokyo Narita. Other routes that have been boosted include the likes of Denpasar (via Singapore), Hong Kong, Jakarta (via Kuala Lumpur), Los Angeles International, Montréal Trudeau, Taipei and Toronto Pearson.

Closer to home, KLM has also boosted plenty of its European routes, with Billund (Denmark) and Stavanger (Norway) both seeing daily rotations. Meanwhile, over in the UK, where KLM serves even more airports than flag carrier British Airways, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, and Southampton will all see boosts, alongside, to name just a few, destinations in the likes of France, Italy, and Poland.

Tentatively returning to Israel 

KLM is also among the carriers that are planning to resume their flights to Israel in the coming months, while, as the airline puts it, "closely monitoring the security situation​​​​​​​." Its daily flights from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv will resume on April 1st, but with a stopover in Larnaca, Cyprus until at least May 19th. British Airways has deployed a similar strategy for its return to Tel Aviv.