Dutch airline KLM plans to speed up its cost reductions of €700m, chief executive Pieter Elbers told the Wall Street Journal on Friday.

The savings, originally envisaged to be made by 2020, will now be achieved in 2018, Elbers said. The company will announce its new restructuring plans in September.

Elbers told the WSJ it is ‘a logical approach’ to accelerate the cost-cutting programme.

His comments come a day after the company reached agreement with its pilots on new pay and conditions after nearly a year of negotiations.

The three-year agreement, back-dated to January 1 2015, includes a freeze on pay over the three years of the agreement, giving KLM an annual saving of €100m, the NRC reports.

The combined airline Air France-KLM managed to bring down its losses sharply last year despite a pilots’ strike, making a loss of €198m compared with a €1.8bn loss in 2013.