KLM announced a wide-ranging restructuring plan on Thursday, 5 November, aimed at permanently reducing costs and improving annual earnings by €1 billion. The measures affect ground handling, catering, customer services, maintenance and fleet planning.
Around 5,000 positions have already been or will be organised differently. Separately, productivity measures are expected to result in approximately 1,000 fewer positions.
More work transferred to external partners
KLM plans to move additional activities to specialist partners or within the wider Air France-KLM group.
Work involving approximately 1,250 positions at KLM Catering Services has been carried out in cooperation with gategroup since this spring. Ground Services activities involving an estimated 800 positions are expected to move to external providers in the coming years.
Another 2,000 positions will be transferred to Air France-KLM, including 1,500 at customer contact centre Cygnific.
KLM expects to limit the impact on employees through natural attrition, voluntary arrangements and transfers to other positions. Overall, the number of positions at the airline is expected to decline by almost another 15%.
Embraer E195-E2 replaces planned A320 aircraft
The restructuring also changes KLM’s plans for European flights. The airline will retain its Airbus A321neo programme but replace its planned Airbus A320 aircraft with smaller Embraer E195-E2 jets.
This gives KLM Cityhopper a larger role in the European network. Existing Boeing 737 and Embraer E190 aircraft will be phased out over the coming years.
KLM says the revised fleet mix will allow it to match capacity more closely to demand. The airline has not announced a list of routes that will be removed or reduced as part of these changes.
Higher quarterly profit is not enough
KLM reported third-quarter operating profit of €458 million, up €106 million compared with the same period in 2025.
For the first nine months of 2026, operating profit reached €526 million and revenue increased to €10.9 billion. However, the operating margin for the nine-month period remained at 4.8%, below KLM’s longer-term target of more than 8%.
The Back on Track programme has delivered €750 million in improvements so far. Management says further changes are needed to fund investment in aircraft, customer services and employees.
KLM is targeting a structural productivity increase of at least 8% by 2028 and intends to discuss new employment agreements with trade unions.
Credits
Sources
KLM restructuring announcement, 5 November 2026 · KLM Group third-quarter results
Photo
MartinD / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. KLM headquarters in Amstelveen, archive photograph from 2009. Cropped to 16:9; adaptation under the same licence.
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