Company Profile
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, then still the Dutch East Indies, in October 1924. Regular scheduled flights to the Far East began in 1929. The route remained the world's longest until the outbreak of World War II. KLM aircraft continued to fly from England throughout the war, but operations from its homebase, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, had to be reconstructed from zero in 1945. Albert Plesman, who had founded and led the airline from the beginning, threw himself into this task with the same energy he had applied to the pre-war company. By the fall of 1945, Far Eastern services had recommenced and in May 1946, KLM was the first continental European airline to open transatlantic services to the USA.
In the fiscal year ended March 31, 2000, KLM carried 15,742 million passengers and 621,000 tons of cargo and mail. KLM ranks seventh among the International Air Transport Association’s more than 200 member airlines in terms of international revenue ton kilometers. The route network operated by KLM and partner airlines connects 145 cities in 67 countries on six continents. KLM employed a global work force of more than 30,000 people on March 31, 2000, approximately 4,000 of them employed outside KLM’s home country, the Netherlands. KLM operates a modern fleet of 125 aircraft, including those operated by regional subsidiary KLM cityhopper. The fleet is one of the youngest in the airline industry with an average age of eight years.
KLM achieved a net income for fiscal 1999/2000 of NLG 13,875 million (EUR 6,296 million). Around 13 percent of this total was earned through work for third parties, including aircraft maintenance and leasing, flight handling, catering, and flight and ground employee training. The State of the Netherlands owns 14.1 percent of the voting shares in KLM, including cumulative preference shares.
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