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KLM Royal Dutch Airlines was co-founded by the air pioneer Albert Plesman on 7th September 1919. After a successful and well-visited airline exhibition in the year 1918. The former pilot Albert Plesman made the suggestion to the commission of founding an airline. The starting capital of the airline amounted to 1.2 million Gulden and was contributed by several wealthy Dutch businessmen. Albert Plesman was then elected as the president and is therefore considered one of KLM’s founding fathers. The first flight took place in the following year on 17th May 1920 with the DeHavilland D.H.16, which flew from London to Amsterdam and along with newspapers also had two English journalists on board.The first machines were provided by the company AT&T, but KLM was very quickly able to buy its own machines from the Dutch airplane manufacturer Fokker, as the vice president of the airline was Anthony Fokker, who also provided the company with his technical knowledge. As the company had, from the beginning, carried the title Royal in its name (from the former Queen Wilhelmina), it was given the national task of providing stable and reliable air transport between the Netherlands and the former Indonesian colony. After a period of strategic planning, the KLM therefore began to operate and develop its flights between Amsterdam and Jakarta, which was at the time the longest flight route in the world.

During the Second World War, the airline more or less overnight ceased to provide international flights from the Netherlands and painted its machines orange in order to be better recognized. Using the machines that had not been won over from the German army, the company flew to Great Britain and, from there, continued to provide flights to Indonesia and the Caribbean. KLM also transported passengers and soldiers on behalf of the English government from Bristol to Lisbon and Gibraltar. After the war the Dutch government provided a sum of 23 million gulden in order to help the financial recovery of the airline. As early as on 21st May 1946, the airline was then able to operate its first flight after the Second World War from Amsterdam to New York.

The KLM was also the first airline to order the larger Boeing machines in Seattle in 1971 for use in passenger transport. For maintenance and servicing, an alliance was set up with other airlines that owned Boeings, which is more or less the predecessor of all present international cooperation. The former alliance consisted of the airlines KLM, SAS, Swissair and the French UTA, which in 1990 was taken over by Air France. During these exciting and eventful years KLM also provided aid in developing Garuda Indonesia, Phillipine Airlines and VIASA in Venezuela. Later, in the year 1988, KLM signed a transatlantic alliance with Northwest-Airlines, in which it continued to be financially involved for many years. In 1991 KLM again showed its pioneer spirit by cancelling its first class service to the Caribbean as a result of dwindling demand and after long deliberation. This daring decision further helped to increase the airline’s passenger numbers.

Since then the airline has been very successful and formed a merger with Air France in the summer of 2004. These two prestigious European airlines have since then represented the largest operating airline in Europe and, counting the number of flight miles, are also the fourth largest in the world. Within this merger, both partners joined the internationally renowned Skyteam-Alliance, to which the airlines Aeroflot, Aeromexico, Alitalia, Continental Airlines, Czech Airlines, Delta Airlines, Korean Air and the former KLM partner Northwest Airlines also belong. Plans include taking up the airlines China Southern Airlines, Copa Airlines, Air Europe, Kenya Airways and Air Algerie into this extremely successful international alliance by the end of 2007.

Currently (July 2007), the KLM fleet consists of a total of 106 planes, which fly to almost all large airports worldwide such as Auckland, Detroit, Osaka, Sao Paolo or Tel Aviv, this does not include the subsidiaries KLM Cityhopper, KLM Cargo which are also operated by the airline.