One of the easiest airlines to spot in airports around the world is KLM. Its light blue and white planes are easy to spot from a mile away. Royal Dutch Airlines, also know as KLM, forms one of the most important group in cooperation with Air France. As one of the most important carriers on the worldwide aviation stage let’s take a closer look at the Dutch flag carrier’s fleet composition in 2024.
In this post:
The KLM Fleet Structure
Before looking in depth at what the composition of the KLM fleet, we need to make a distinction on how the fleet is structured. KLM divides its fleet in two:
- KLM Cityhopper, operates all the airline’s regional connections in the areas around the Netherlands.
- KLM Main Fleet operates all the larger aircraft.
Cityhopper, as we’ll later see, operates only smaller jets to extremely short haul destinations in the Netherlands or in their immediate proximity. The main fleet on the other hand covers all other major destination and long haul services to all of the airline’s longer network spokes.
The KLM Main Fleet
Although the Dutch flag carrier operates a mixed Airbus-Boeing fleet, the latter of the two manufacturers has a stronger presence. Here’s the aircraft split per manufacturer:
- 11 Airbus Planes (All Passenger)
- 96 Boeing Planes (94 Passenger + 3 Cargo)
We’ll see how this balance evolves in coming years depending how the AF-KLM group distribute the many Airbus A320 family planes on order. However long haul operations are likely to see a stronger Boeing presence as time goes by.
Looking exclusively at passenger operations the airline operates its long haul network with the following aircraft:
- 6 Airbus A330-200
- 5 Airbus A330-300
- 15 Boeing 777-200ER
- 16 Boeing 777-300ER
- 10 Boeing 787-10
- 13 Boeing 787-9
Among these planes though, at the moment it is the Boeing 787s that are getting the most attention with all the newest equipment. The Boeing 777s and Airbus A330s all feature the older 2-2-2 KLM business class cabin, while the 787s (both 9 and 10 variants) have the much roomier 1-2-1 layout. So if you’re travelling Business Class on KLM you’ll definitely get a better ride on the Dreamliner at the moment.
Moving on to short haul operations, this is where the Boeing dominance is quite clear in the KLM fleet. If you’re flying on the KLM main fleet (not Cityhopper) within Europe you are almost certain to be on a Boeing 737. The Dutch carrier will start to diversify its short haul fleet with some new generation Airbus A321neo planes. Therefore the presence of Airbus planes will be extremely limited for quite some time and this is what the KLM short haul fleet looks like:
- 6 Boeing 737-700
- 31 Boeing 737-800
- 5 Boeing 737-900
All these Boeing 737 feature the same cabin layout. They all feature a full 3-3 seat configuration with the central seat blocked in Business class. Therefore not a huge difference between travelling in Y or J class across Europe.
The KLM Cityhopper Fleet
Cityhopper, as mentioned, is the regional division of KLM. It is comparable to Lufthansa’s Cityliner, and makes only short hops towards smaller or secondary airports. This part of the fleet features only Brazilian produced Embraer aircraft. This is the composition of the KLM Cityhopper fleet:
- 30 Embraer E-190
- 18 Embraer E-175
- 15 Embraer E-195 E2
The E2s, the last on the list, are the latest product developed by Embraer and are extremely advanced planes. However they still aren’t all that popular with airlines as many opted for the similarly sized Airbus A220 which has a longer range.
The Cargo Fleet
To wrap things up let’s take a look at the much smaller Cargo fleet. True aviation lovers will be happy to see that although in the cargo division the Dutch flag carrier utilise the Queen of the Skies, the Boeing 747-400F. The airline has 3 of the jumbos for its freight operations.
