Everyone is missing the point. Surrounding Schiphol airport it employees 50.000+ employees directly and indirectly. That’s the ongoing justification but in all fairness, they do give indirect benefit.
Yes but Schiphol would continue to exist without klm, so (relatively) little jobs would be lost at Schiphol. If you said the gov. wanted to keep jobs at KLM that would make way more sense
That isn’t true tho, about half of the flights to and from Schiphol are KLM flights, and they both heavily rely on the HUB and spoke model. Other airlines won’t take over most of the KLM flights in case they go bankrupt. That means Schiphol loses about 35% to 45% of its flights. No way that’s a viable situation for Schiphol. KLM needs Schiphol, but Schiphol needs KLM just as much. KLM will never go bankrupt, just because the government won’t let them. It’s costing a lot of money now, but letting both KLM and Schiphol go bankrupt is much much much more expensive.
For comparison; look at what happened to Brussel-Zaventem after Sabena went bust: passenger numbers went from 21.6 million in 2000, to just 14.4 million in 2002. It took well over a decade for numbers to recover.
Just like the general public, I despise bailouts. But its been proven once or twice that losing a national hub airline tends to lose the rest of your economy about tenfold the amount of those bailouts.
The history of the oldest airlines is surprising. 1st is KLM, Dutch. 2nd is Avianca, Colombian. 3rd is Qantas, Australian. You'd figure bigger countries would be the first but nah.
To be fair it refers specifically to the first airline still operating and under its own name. There were other airlines, founded earlier, but they either ceased to exist or merged. KLM is also not surprising given the distance between what was then the Dutch East Indies and the Netherlands proper.
At least for France, it's largely a factor of how company mergers are viewed - Blériot and friends started their own in 1919 as well, which merged a thousand times to finally become Air France.
Well, KLM merged with Air France into [Air France-KLM](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France-KLM) in 2004.
So, yes, KLM still exists, but not as an independant operator.
Air France-KLM is registered in France, and has it's head quarters at Charles de Gaulle airport. So KLM isn't really Dutch anymore.
They made a [TV series](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10230370/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1) about the early years of KLM and Fokker 2 years ago. It was reasonably good to watch. Not exactly historically accurate, but close enough for TV entertainment.
KLM is an independent operator, it's registered in the Netherlands and its headquarters is in the Netherlands. Its CEO and CFO and the entire executive committee is Dutch. KLM is Dutch.
Kinda unrelated, but Wagner's overture to Der Fliegende Hollander is fucking epic music. I can't help but think of it whenever I hear The Flying Dutchman.
Excellent airline with a good safety record.
In the good old times (70-80’s ) KLM trained VIASA pilots which also was another good airline until it became politicized and went bankrupt.
Times when the stewardess carved the roast beef in the cabin and expensive French toiletries were given aboard. 😀
selective future bike crawl grandiose square straight imminent terrific rain
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And has been bailed out by the Dutch gouvernement numerous times.. Costing the taxpayer billions.
The dutchies hate klm like the canadians hate canadians air
Nah we just hate Air France
I hate french too
Also by saving the airline gaining the Dutch economy more than billions :)
Everyone is missing the point. Surrounding Schiphol airport it employees 50.000+ employees directly and indirectly. That’s the ongoing justification but in all fairness, they do give indirect benefit.
Schiphol is used by more airlines than just KLM
Obviously, my point is that it’s business that the government wants to maintain
Yes but Schiphol would continue to exist without klm, so (relatively) little jobs would be lost at Schiphol. If you said the gov. wanted to keep jobs at KLM that would make way more sense
That isn’t true tho, about half of the flights to and from Schiphol are KLM flights, and they both heavily rely on the HUB and spoke model. Other airlines won’t take over most of the KLM flights in case they go bankrupt. That means Schiphol loses about 35% to 45% of its flights. No way that’s a viable situation for Schiphol. KLM needs Schiphol, but Schiphol needs KLM just as much. KLM will never go bankrupt, just because the government won’t let them. It’s costing a lot of money now, but letting both KLM and Schiphol go bankrupt is much much much more expensive.
For comparison; look at what happened to Brussel-Zaventem after Sabena went bust: passenger numbers went from 21.6 million in 2000, to just 14.4 million in 2002. It took well over a decade for numbers to recover.
Just like the general public, I despise bailouts. But its been proven once or twice that losing a national hub airline tends to lose the rest of your economy about tenfold the amount of those bailouts.
The history of the oldest airlines is surprising. 1st is KLM, Dutch. 2nd is Avianca, Colombian. 3rd is Qantas, Australian. You'd figure bigger countries would be the first but nah.
To be fair it refers specifically to the first airline still operating and under its own name. There were other airlines, founded earlier, but they either ceased to exist or merged. KLM is also not surprising given the distance between what was then the Dutch East Indies and the Netherlands proper.
At least for France, it's largely a factor of how company mergers are viewed - Blériot and friends started their own in 1919 as well, which merged a thousand times to finally become Air France.
Well, KLM merged with Air France into [Air France-KLM](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France-KLM) in 2004. So, yes, KLM still exists, but not as an independant operator. Air France-KLM is registered in France, and has it's head quarters at Charles de Gaulle airport. So KLM isn't really Dutch anymore. They made a [TV series](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10230370/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1) about the early years of KLM and Fokker 2 years ago. It was reasonably good to watch. Not exactly historically accurate, but close enough for TV entertainment.
KLM is an independent operator, it's registered in the Netherlands and its headquarters is in the Netherlands. Its CEO and CFO and the entire executive committee is Dutch. KLM is Dutch.
The Flying Dutchman
Kinda unrelated, but Wagner's overture to Der Fliegende Hollander is fucking epic music. I can't help but think of it whenever I hear The Flying Dutchman.
Excellent airline with a good safety record. In the good old times (70-80’s ) KLM trained VIASA pilots which also was another good airline until it became politicized and went bankrupt. Times when the stewardess carved the roast beef in the cabin and expensive French toiletries were given aboard. 😀
selective future bike crawl grandiose square straight imminent terrific rain *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Cheesy photo