Word: klm
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...eleven years the Dutch have been trying mightily to get new U.S. air routes to add to KLM Royal Dutch Airlines' profitable runs from Amsterdam to New York and Curasao to Miami. They have been opposed both by the Civil Aeronautics Board, which feels that the U.S. is already well serviced, and U.S. airlines, which want no more competition. Domestic lines keep a watchful eye on foreign carriers since the State Department granted lush U.S. air routes to West Germany's Lufthansa (TIME, June 27, 1955). But the Dutch made their campaign an affair of national honor. Last...
Domestic airlines argue that the new routes for KLM (worth about $1,000,000 a year in passenger and freight traffic) will open the door for much more foreign competition for U.S. airlines. The State Department got in return rights for U.S. carriers to fly from any point in the U.S. to Amsterdam and beyond (the U.S. now flies from Amsterdam only to Frankfurt) and into and beyond Surinam and The Netherlands Antilles (Pan American already flies to the Antilles). But U.S. carriers belittle such concessions, point out that air traffic between the U.S. and the Antilles is light...
...Dutch, for their part, insist that the new U.S. routes are a matter of survival for KLM, which is 90% government-owned. KLM feels it must expand to remain healthy since it cannot hope for a greater share of the European market, this means turning to the U.S. and Canada. The biggest foreign purchaser of U.S. air transports (all its equipment is U.S. made), KLM also needs dollars to pay for some 30 new U.S. planes on order. But to the proud and independent Dutch, the prestige of their beloved KLM, the world's oldest continuing airline...
Quick Comeback. Founded in 1919 by a roughhewn, forceful Dutch flyer named Albert Plesman, KLM inaugurated the world's first scheduled airplane passenger service in 1920 by flying from London to Amsterdam in a chartered de Havilland 16. By World War II it had a fleet of 51 planes, served 61 cities in 29 countries. In a few days Nazi bombers almost completely wiped it out. At war's end KLM had only four planes in Europe, but Plesman (who died in 1953) gathered KLM personnel from all over the world, led "the Flying Dutchman" in a remarkable...
FIRST FOREIGN LINE to fly Lockheed's 410-m.p.h. turboprop Electra will be The Netherlands' KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, which has ordered twelve of the transports (total cost: $30 million) for delivery in late 1959. Lockheed now has 116 Electras on order, expects to sell more to European airlines...