KLM president encourages train travel to reduce carbon emissions

The chief executive of airline KLM has encouraged passengers to use trains instead of planes for some short trips to help cut carbon emissions, saying the airline industry must stop seeing rail transport as a competitor.

“if [você] there’s a good alternative, you really should use it”, said Marjan Rintel in an interview with the Financial Times. “If you are committed to achieving your sustainability goals, the train is not a competitor. We need to work together.”

She also said she used the train when traveling from Amsterdam, where KLM is headquartered, to parent company Air France-KLM’s headquarters in Paris.

National governments across Europe have taken steps to put people on high-speed trains rather than short-haul flights to reduce the carbon cost of flying.

Air France, the French carrier that belongs to the same holding company as KLM, stopped flying domestic routes where there are rail or road alternatives that take less than two and a half hours in 2020, as part of measures agreed with the French government in exchange for help during the Covid-19 pandemic.

French lawmakers later approved a bill formalizing the ban on short flights, a measure passed by the European Union last week. Effectively, however, the changes only affect three routes departing from Paris, with connecting flights, for example, exempt.

In June, the Dutch government announced plans to reduce flights from Schiphol Airport by more than 10% to 440,000 a year. The move is likely to cause a sharp reduction in short-haul flights from Schiphol and could put a brake on the future growth of the national airline, KLM.

Rintel said KLM, in response, had already booked seats on the train service linking Amsterdam to Brussels and Paris, and asked the company “to develop relationships with Dutch railways to see what we can do in the short term to motivate our customers to go by train to Brussels or Paris”.

KLM is also trying to facilitate the purchase of air and train tickets in a single booking and is in talks with railway companies in the Netherlands and France to facilitate transfers, Rintel said.

Baggage services can be integrated, allowing customers to leave luggage at the airport and collect it at the end of a train journey, for example. “As a customer, you always look at the end destination… so we should offer a product like this,” she said.

Rintel worked for Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS), the Dutch state-owned rail operator, for six years and was the group’s chief executive for almost two years before leaving for KLM in July this year.

However, she showed no interest in being directly involved in operating rail services and said the airline would work with NS and Eurostar Group, owner of the Eurostar service across the English Channel and the Thalys service linking France. , Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.

Rintel took the helm after a period of strained relations between KLM and its parent company. Mixed performances between the airlines caused tensions as the group’s chief executive, Ben Smith, sought to reap the benefits of closer cooperation. The tensions culminated in the Dutch government’s decision to take a 14% stake in Air France-KLM in 2019, to protect KLM’s interests.

Rintel said the stability of operations was his top priority after chaos at airports this summer forced airlines to substantially reduce the number of flights to deal with long delays.

“Furthermore, building relationships” with stakeholders, including the Dutch government, was a priority. “The enemy is not in the group. There will be consolidation across Europe. We are in exceptional new times and we need to be strong together,” she said.

The airline has threatened to take legal action over the cuts at Schiphol, but Rintel said that had yet to be decided. “We have claims on the table. My first objective is for Schiphol to provide the capacity we need.”

translation of Luiz Roberto M. Goncalves