KLM
Royal Dutch Airlines was founded on October 7,
1919. It has continued to operate under the same name to this day, making it the oldest scheduled airline in the world with a
continuous history.
The carrier's first
scheduled flight, on May 17,
1920, connected Amsterdam and London. By the end of that year the company had carried 345 passengers, 22 tons of cargo and three tons of mail.
The airline operated its first
intercontinental flight to
Indonesia, back then still called the
Dutch East Indies, in October
1924.
The route became a regular flight in
1929 and remained the world's longest until the outbreak of World War II.
KLM continued to fly
from England to Europe throughout the war, but operations from its homebase,
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, had to be
reconstructed from zero in
1945.
By the fall of 1945, Far
Eastern services had re
commenced and in May
1946, KLM was the first
continental
European airline to open
transatlantic services to the
USA.
KLM's current (1998) route
network covers 163 cities in 75 countries on six continents. On April 1, 1997, KLM
workforce totaled 26,811 (excluding subsidiaries). About 4,500 of these are employed outside
The Netherlands.