Travellers' Checks | KLM, world’s oldest airline, has come a long way in 100 years

When a KLM plane tested the first long-haul commercial air route from the Netherlands to Indonesia it took 55 days

Now, the journey between Amsterdam and Jakarta, via Kuala Lumpur, lasts around 14 hours

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The eight-passenger Fokker F.VII plane (registration H-NACC) that made KLM’s first journey from the Netherlands to Indonesia in 1924.

Adam Nebbs

Published: 1:15pm, 7 Jun 2019Updated: 3:19pm, 7 Jun 2019

Compared with British Airways’ rather contrived “centenary” celebrations this year, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines appears to be taking a low-key approach to its 100th anniversary. Founded in October 1919 – making it the world’s oldest airline, British Airways’ claims aside – KLM was soon looking to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and planning the world’s first long-haul commercial air route. A test flight took off from Amsterdam on October 1, 1924. This was a bold move for the airline. The first aerial circumnavigation of the world had been concluded only a few weeks earlier, by military aircraft, after many attempts by several countries, and had taken six months to complete. The KLM plane, heading about a third of the way round, was a small, single-engine, eight-passenger Fokker F.VII (registration H-NACC) with three men on board.

Two days into the journey its engine failed, forcing a crash landing in Bulgaria, and delaying the onward journey until November 2. By this time, newspapers across Asia were keenly following the flight’s progress. A reporter from The Bangkok Times met the pilots in the Thai capital’s Don Mueang Airport on November 17. By then, the weary captain had decided that, for the time being, “an aerial commercial service between the Netherlands and Java is absolutely out of the question”. On November 21, the aircraft was spotted by a Straits Times correspondent, circling over George Town, Penang, before heading southwest across the Strait of Malacca towards Sumatra. On November 25, The Hongkong Daily Press carried a Reuters report that the “Dutch aviators” had finally arrived in Batavia (now Jakarta).

The tiny plane, which had put in 127 flying hours over 55 days and flown more than 15,000km, was dismantled and sent back to the Netherlands by ship, only to be destroyed in a crash in Belgium in 1926. But the groundwork for a regular air link between Europe and Asia had been laid. A 22-day round trip was flown by a three-engine version of the Fokker F.VII (pictured above with an early 1930s route map) in 1927, and in September 1929, KLM launched what would for the next decade be the longest scheduled flight in the world, from Amsterdam to the Dutch East Indies. The journey took less than six days. Today, KLM flies between the two cities via Kuala Lumpur in around 14 hours.

An official 288-page illustrated history of the airline, titled Welcome Aboard!: 100 Years of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, will be published by W Books on September 1.

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