Chief airline asks her passengers to take the train instead of the plane for their transportation and the reason has to do with her climate change and the effects that the frequent use of aircraft has on the environment.
THE Dutch airline KLM he would like serve far fewer people on the short route between Amsterdam Schiphol Airport and Brusselswhile he even intends to buy them train tickets.
“If there are connections, if the connections are good, if they reach Schiphol, if they also run on weekends, we are more than willing to stop flying to Brussels,” the company’s CEO Marian Riddell told Politico, adding: “We move our customers from the plane to the train”.
This decision comes after airlines are under pressure to reduce their carbon footprint – and firsts in the “line of fire” are short flights which could be replaced by much more environmentally friendly rail transport.
KLM faces yet another problem. Schiphol reaches its maximum capacity for flights and the government is trying to limit the number of takeoffs and landings to reduce noise pollution.
“These flights (between Brussels and Amsterdam) have 14 times the climate impact of the train” said Victor Thévenet, from the Green Group Transport & Environment.
Marian Riedel’s approach coincides with that of the European Commission, which sets the ambitious goal of ensuring that journeys of less than 500 kilometers are CO2 neutral by 2030.
For the head of KLM, which is former managing director of state railwaysthis means trains instead of planes on the 200km route between the Dutch and Belgian airports, a flight that lasts 55 minutes, while the journey does not exceed 100 minutes by high-speed train from the center of one city to the center of another.
But a big problem in abolishing the four daily flights between Schiphol and Brussels is that the rail alternative is not up to the taskwith a particular problem on morning and weekend routes.
As part of efforts to reduce flights, KLM has bought a number of seats on the Thalys high-speed train.
However, it is not only the Dutch airline that wants to serve fewer passengers. The German one Lufthansa has long partnered with state-owned Deutsche Bahn to take passengers from Frankfurt’s giant hub on trains instead of connecting flights. KLM’s sister airline, the Air Francehas done the same with SNCF.
Source: News Beast
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