LONDON – KLM has stopped flying to the Egyptian capital city of Cairo since February, despite not having made an official announcement, according to the Dutch aviation news site Luchtvaartnieuws.nl.

According to KLM, they have returned to Cairo since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, after a 3-year hiatus, because there was a “huge cargo demand” at the time.

However, they have stopped flying back to Cairo since February of 2022 because “there are other routes in the same network that has a stronger demand.”

This is Bizarre…

While this is not a big issue on its own, it is certainly a problem for other people who want to travel to Cairo this summer. The big issue in this is that the airline has not communicated with the people, as shown by the news site.

One of their readers has reached out to KLM, through Facebook and KLM’s website, asking questions about why they stopped flying to Cairo, but “has left the reader in the dark” by ignoring his question completely.

As an airline, it should be its responsibility to communicate information like this to everyone, and even if their customer service doesn’t know the answer, it shouldn’t have to take 2 months after shutting down the route to say something about this.

What now?

While KLM has suspended its direct services from Amsterdam, Air France is continuing their passenger operations to Cairo.

Passengers are advised to fly with Air France to Cairo, and passengers originating from Amsterdam have the option to fly with KLM  to Paris and take a transfer flight to their destination.

They also have the option to take the high-speed rail to Paris and then take a direct flight to Cairo.

KLM leaving Cairo to fulfill flights with higher demand shows that the recovery of airlines isn’t going too well, especially since some of KLM’s brand new 787 have not yet been delivered by Boeing with their expected delivery time being estimated at the second half of this year.

If problems like this will continue to happen, it should be very worrisome for many on how the airlines will tackle the already quickly rising summer demand.

A couple of airlines, such as BA, EasyJet, and others have already cut down their summer schedule by some flights.

Afterthought

This is the last situation an airline wants to be in, as it means they’re losing a lot of possible revenue.

One possible reason is that they have lost so many pilots during the pandemic, that it’s hard getting by for the airlines to fill the gap.

It has been shown that during any economical crisis, quite a large group of pilots has been laid off, but there was always a chance of returning to work.

With the pandemic behind (sort of) behind us, many are fearing that the situation will never return to 2019 conditions, where no one had to worry that tomorrow, maybe, a region went into lockdown.

KLM has already changed its hiring policy quite a while ago, stating that recruits must be fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus, as many countries are requiring that people flying into their country should be fully vaccinated.