Antwerp - Amsterdam
 

With Antwerp's Deurne airport expanding, with VLM operating 5 daily flights to London City, and 2 daily flights to Manchester, and 3 daily flights to Frankfurt (with a Air France codeshare), it's about time that somebody restarts the once amazing route to Amsterdam.

It would make more sense for KLM to do it, as people will use it for connecting flights.

Anyone have any info, of this dream coming true?

I believe that Schiphol Train Station had not yet opened when those flights were running.

Antwerpen Centraal to Schiphol is less than two hours by train. Unless you live right next door to Deurne it makes no sense whatsoever to fly. From the centre of Antwerp you can get to Schiphol by train before your flight even starts to taxi.

Looks like you have never used Deurne airport, I use it 3 times a month flying ANR-LCY.

From most places in Antwerp, Deurne is only a 10 minute drive, and arriving 20minutes before your flight is enough, meaning that by flying it, you save about 1:15, and you have not got the hassle of dragging your suitcase's on and off the train, and sitting stressed for 2 hours on the train making sure that no one is nicking your suitcase (especially stressful when arriving AMS in the morning after a night flight, and fighting not to fall asleep).
Lets not forget to mention the amount of overweight which used to go uncharged at Deurne;)

Don't make assumptions. Friends of mine used to live down the road from Deurne and one of them kept a light aircraft there. I do know the area quite well.

As for anyone running scheduled services between there and AMS... it's not going to happen. No one is going to run flights on routes this short any more (unless they're to or between tiny islands). Just look at what's happened to short routes in the UK. I remember LHR-BHX, I remember LHR-NWI. They've all gone and they won't be coming back. With today's fuel prices, landing fees, handling fees etc etc they're just not economically viable.

If so are they going to stop BRU-AMS too?

Most likely, yes. The new high-speed Fyra trains will commence service on the HSL-Zuid line between Amsterdam, Schiphol and Rotterdam-CS this September; when Fyra services are finally extended into Belgium (currently expected in mid 2010), the journey time from Schiphol to Antwerpen Centraal will be cut from 1h50 to just 53 minutes; and Schiphol to Brussel-Zuid will be cut from the current 2h35 to only 1h30, according to their own figures. KLM is part of the NS Hispeed consortium that will run the high speed service on the new line.

It's expected (or possible) that by 2010, the very short stretches of AF-KLM's short-haul services will be operated solely by train.

Air France already operates a TGV service from Brussels to CDG.

And then there are environmental considerations. Short hops are not exactly popular with the green lobby.

With KL phasing out their F50s at an accelerated pace, and plans to restructure (i.e. reduce) KLC operations, this is bound to happen.

Johan

Cool info, irishguy28! ^In all fairness, AF doesn't operate the TGV service from Bruxelles to CDG (I believe SNCF is the operator). ;)

The high speed train from Brussels to Paris is operated by Thalys, a consortium of the French 62%, Belgian 28% and German 10% national rail operators (source http://www.thalys.com/fr/fr/a-propos...lys/entreprise.) Am actually surprised that Dutch railway is not part of the group since they connect to Amsterdam.

True, but there special Air France coaches, and the trips are assigned an AF "flight" number. However, with the proposed AF-KLM and Veolia joint venture to operate high speed rail services after the deregulation of the international rail passenger market in Europe in 2010, the statement may soon be true.

I think a HST between Schiphol and (really) Brussels would be excellent. I just checked klm.com for GLA-(AMS)-BRU and I get the option of an F50 link to BRU or a train link to ZWE (then I'd have to get from Antwerp to Brussels under my own steam). The trouble at the moment is that the fare with AMS-BRU (> £500) is three times that with the AMS-ZWE (~£170), but the only GLA-AMS-ZWE schedule offered leaves GLA on the 05:55 (KL1470) flight (which seems very odd - surely KL can get a 27xx code share on more than one train per day).

-- H

Intresting as the same train actually continues to BRU, and I know many people who use the train to BRU, if there is no flight connection straight away. Call KLM this is for sure possible to arrange.

Sounds very odd, what I can say is that KLM always give you the connection on a Thaly's train, even if it means waiting for hours, although your ticket can be changed to a normal train ticket (which departs every hour) at the train station in Schipol, and they will even give you first class, as you are changing from a Thaly's ticket (request in Schipol to change your return train too, because if you wait to do it in Belgium they won't give you a first class ticket), once again call KLM, they can most probaly book you on the other flights too.

^ Thanks for the tips, ELAL! It did seem strange to me, as I have often been waiting at Schiphol for the train to Centraal and noticed the frequency of trains to Brussels.

On a related, slightly off-thread note (and old-news, I'm afraid), there's also the possibility of AF running trains PAR-LON next year: link. I'm just wondering: (a) how would that impact the CityJet LCY-CDG service (LCY is easy to get to from the city centre, but CDG may be a different story) and (b) do such train journeys (even the existing ones) count as FB elite qualifying segments?

-- H

VLM discontinues FRA service (Article in Dutch).

Johan

Sad news :(
Intresting that both on KVS and on the VLM website, it's still shows the flights as operating.