KLM 100 Years – The Ocean of the Air

It was a glorious October 7th when KLM was founded by Albert Plesman and some other Dutch businessmen who saw that flying will be the future of transportation. Later, on May 17th, 1920, there was the first flight from London to Amsterdam. The plane carried two British journalists and a letter from the mayor of London to his counterpart in Amsterdam. There is no doubt, Alber Plesman was a visionary and his heritage lives on in everything KLM stands for today. 100 years ago Plesman believed that ”The ocean of the air unites all people.” And indeed this ocean in the skies is where traveling has slowly migrated to since then.
On October 1st 1924, a KLM flight was departing for the first intercontinental flight, from Amsterdam to Jakarta. The trip would take 55 days and had 21 stops. The expansion continued and in 1930, there was the first flight to Curaçao. 1946 is the year KLM became the first ever airline to connect Europe to America, flying from Amsterdam to New York.

The full story in MISTERWATCH No. 3 printed November edition 2019.

by Constantin Bacheș