Schiphol-based Transavia is likely to face operational issues in the coming weeks as it ramps up its schedule for the Summer season. The airline, a low-cost carrier (LCC) of the Air France-KLM Group, has been facing supply chain issues critical for maintaining its fleet, reported Dutch aviation news website LuchtvaartNieuws.nl this weekend.

The issues will be aggravated with five Boeing 737-800 that were supposed to join the fleet from Romanian bankrupt LCC, Blue Air, which were leased from Air Lease Corporation (ALC) but are not yet ready.

LuchtvaartNieuws attributes this delay to a lack of documentation for the aircraft. One of the ex-Blue Air aircraft, PH-HBJ, is expected to enter the airline’s network on Wednesday, with rotations from Amsterdam to Thessaloniki and Seville, according to data by Flightradar24.com.

Given that the Dutch operation of Transavia is currently composed of 40 airplanes, as per Planespotters.net, four delayed aircraft could still potentially disrupt the company’s network. According to LuchtvaartNieuws, the company said it did not expect the aircraft to be active in time for the May holidays.

To Aviacionline, a Transavia spokesman stated, on email, that «we are indeed experiencing some delays with the commissioning of Blue Air’s aircraft», but that «it is too early to say that this will affect our Summer services».

As with most European airlines, given the high seasonality of the local market, Transavia resorts to hiring additional capacity on short-term dry and wet lease agreements. However, the spokesperson could not «immediately say what the impact of this will be on whether or not we will hire additional capacity».

According to Travelpro.nl, another travel news website from the Netherlands, Transavia was always expected to cancel a number of flights from Schiphol during the May holidays, given that the airport management wanted to avoid a reprise of last year’s chaos and crowds. This would be executed by chopping 5% of the morning peak operations in certain days.

Largely a profitable operation pre-pandemic, Transavia is expected to be the Air France-KLM unit with the most growth in 2023, according to the Group’s latest outlook.

This faster growth, according to Air France-KLM, meant that it was the single business unit of the group to have a negative operating margin in 2022.