hot off the press lines today:

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines today announced it will adjust capacity for coming 2004/05 winter schedule (starting Oct. 31) by nine percent over last winter. Arrival of three additional Boeing 777-200ER aircraft will contribute towards this capacity increase.

In Europe, KLM will introduce a third daily flight to Bucharest, while flights to Thessalonica, Greece will be suspended. Substituting a Boeing 737 for the Fokker 100 on two of three daily flights will increase capacity to Toulouse.

Effective Sept. 15, KLM will launch daily roundtrip service to Atlanta, hub of the airline's new Delta partner. Capacity for this has been released by suspending flights to Miami. The number of weekly roundtrip flights to Houston will increase from nine to ten, as of coming winter schedule, while KLM and Northwest Airlines will raise frequency to Minneapolis from two to three daily roundtrip flights. As usual during winter, daily codeshare roundtrip flights to Detroit operated by Northwest Airlines will decrease from four to three. In comparison with the current summer schedule, flight frequency to San Francisco will be lowered from seven to six roundtrip flights a week.

Effective Dec. 13, flight frequency between Amsterdam and Paramaribo, Suriname will be raised from five to six roundtrip flights a week. KLM and SLM will then each operate three flights a week. From the same date, flight frequency and capacity will be increased on flights to the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba. Bonaire will be served twelve times, Curaçao seven, Aruba five and St. Maarten three times a week. Flight frequency to São Paulo and Lima will be increased from five to six and from six to seven times a week respectively.

The winter schedule will include daily roundtrip flights to Cape Town (Boeing 777) and Cairo (Boeing 767). Flights to Accra (Ghana), Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Lagos, Nigeria will be served with increased capacity by using larger aircraft types. The Nigerian capital of Abudja will be taken up in the airline's schedule as intermediate stopover for flights on the airline's Amsterdam-Malabo, Equitorial Guinea route. As a consequence KLM flights to Douala, Cameroon will be suspended and replaced by Air France via Paris.

This winter, Air France will suspend its flights from Charles de Gaulle to Manila and Jakarta and will book passengers for these destinations on KLM flights. Flight times between the Schiphol and Charles de Gaulle hubs are aligned to connect flights to and from both these hubs. KLM's daily roundtrip flights to and from Jakarta will be operated five times a week with a stopover in Kuala Lumpur and twice with a stopover in Singapore. KLM operates daily to Singapore and five flights a week to Kuala Lumpur. The five flights a week to and from Manila will be carried out nonstop using Boeing 777 equipment as of this winter.

The number of weekly roundtrip flights between Amsterdam and Kuwait will be reduced from six to five during the winter season.

Cargo capacity will increase by 11 percent in comparison with last year's winter schedule. This is largely due to utilizing the now fully operational third Boeing 747-400ERF.