KLM restarts direct service to hurricane victim St Maarten

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is restarting a direct service to the Caribbean drawcard St Maarten as part of a winter schedule that will also see it fly to India’s Bangalore Guanacaste Liberia in Costa Rica. KLM's direct flights to St Maarten were suspended in 2017 due to Hurricane Irma and subsequently combined with the Amsterdam-Curaçao service. The direct service from Schiphol resumes October 27 with twice-weekly Airbus A330 flights on Tuesdays and Thursdays. READ: Lufthansa expands basic economy on intercontinental routes. St Maarten is famous for its beachside airport where thrill-seekers gather to watch aircraft land and take off. KL0729 departs Tuesdays at 11:20 CET from Schiphol and arrives at 15:35 local time on St Maarten. On Thursdays, it departs from Schiphol at 11:45 hours CET and arrives at 16:00 hours local time. Guanacaste Liberia is on the Pacific coast of northwest Costa Rica and KLM will operate a Boeing 787-9 flights four times a week from October 29. It will operate to the Southern Indian technology hub of Bangalore three times weekly from October 30, also using a Boeing 787-9. The airline said it was able to offer the three new destinations from slot-constrained Schiphol by optimizing its network. “We constantly monitor whether the type of aircraft and frequencies for a certain route match market demand and the route's results,’’ it said. “This can mean that routes are sometimes suspended sooner than usual due to slot restrictions at Schiphol, as is the case with Colombo, Sri Lanka, this winter.” The Dutch carrier said it would continue to operate services over winter to the new destinations of Boston, Las Vegas, Naples and Wroclaw launched at the start of the summer schedule. It is also increasing flights on a number of routes including to destinations in Colombia, Brazil, Chile, China and Africa. The Air France-KLM group is increasing capacity by 2.5 percent over the winter season, which ends March 28, compared to winter last year. That includes a 4 percent increase on long-haul flights but a slight reduction on the medium- and short-haul network.