7 October 1919: Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij N.V., operating under the name KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, was founded on 7 October 1919 by Albert Plesman, making it the oldest carrier in the world still operating under its original name, though the company stopped operating during the Second World War—apart from the operations in the Dutch Antilles in the Caribbean.
The first KLM flight was on 17 May 1920, from Croydon Airport, London, to Amsterdam, The Netherlands, carrying two British journalists and a number of newspapers. It was flown by an Airco DH.16, registration G-EALU, piloted by Henry (“Jerry”) Shaw.¹ This airplane, named Arras, was leased from Aircraft Transport and Travel Limited, a British company. Shaw was that company’s chief pilot.
In 1920 KLM carried 440 passengers and 22 tons of freight. In 1921 KLM started scheduled services.
As of 31 December 2023, KLM’s fleet included 238 aircraft. The airline had approximately 35,145 employees.
¹ Please see Henry “Jerry” Shaw (1892–1977), an article by Katy Whitaker, English Heritage, 2014, at Britain from Above: http://britainfromabove.org.uk/sites/default/files/Shaw_Final.pdf
© 2024, Bryan R. Swopes
Dear Bryan, sorry for inconsistently using this space dedicated to comments but I do not have your email address . Lately I have observed that all the posts on your wonderful site are cropped to a smaller size, thus making texts unreadable on my Iphone, unless by manually enlarging the screen which, in turn makes the reading very uncomfortable. Did you perhaps have implemented some changes in WordPress thus making this glitch appear? Hope you can address the issue. Kind regards and many thanks for your work which I greatly appreciate . Roberto Nardi- Italy
No, Roberto, we haven’t made any changes here. It is possible that WordPress has.