Five hours and 20 minutes. This was the time needed by the first plane that covered the Amsterdam-Barcelona route for KLM. It was 1953 and Spain was still reeling from a long post-war period. Even so, the Royal Dutch Airlines opted for the Catalan capital to expand its network of European destinations. Initially, flights between both cities were not direct and were made with intermediate stops at important airports such as Brussels or Frankfurt. Little by little, Barcelona was opening up to the world. It did so thanks to air transport and the Dutch company was one of the protagonists of this influx of other airs from other states.
These months mark 70 years since the first flight between Schiphol and El Prat airports, and this Tuesday, KLM wanted to celebrate it in a very appropriate place: the MOCO Museum on Montcada street, a sister cultural center to the other MOCO that is, precisely, in Amsterdam, specifically at 20 Honthorststraat, next to the mythical Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk or Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and Design. In one of the rooms of the Barcelona MOCO, Laurent Perrier, director of Air France/KLM for Spain and Portugal, recalled how different, and even with a touch of adventure, air travel was 70 years ago, when the skies of Europe were crossed by KLM's Convair 240s connecting the two cities with a maximum of 50 travelers on board.
When KLM began flying to Barcelona, the airline was already a company with some seniority, as it had been operating for 34 years. Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij, which is the meaning, in Dutch, of the acronym KLM, was born in the distant 1919, a fact that has made it the oldest company in the world and, furthermore, it continues to use its original name. It was created more than a century ago between The Hague and Amsterdam, when eight businessmen formed a new company with royal consideration, as Wilhelmina, Queen of the Netherlands and great-grandmother of the current monarch, was very enthusiastic about the founding of an air transport company in her country, hence her blessing and formal authorization for the use of the word royal in the company's name.
Its first route was Amsterdam-London-Amsterdam, a line operated by a British Airco DH.16 that was leased until its own Fokker brand aircraft were available, one of the symbols of European and particularly Dutch aviation. Anton Herman Gerard Fokker, popularly known as Anthony Fokker, was a pioneer of local aviation whose surname is one of the myths of aviation on the continent, as an aviator, but, above all, for the construction of airplanes, creating a company that operated until the mid-90s.
A flying monarch
As a curious fact, the current Dutch monarch, Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, piloted Fokker jets well into the 21st century, both the VIP plane used by the royal family and the Government, as well as the Fokker 70 and 100 used by KLM's regional subsidiary, as he wanted to keep his pilot's license current and was regularly scheduled for commercial flights as a co-pilot or first officer on the Fokkers.
Currently, for state trips of the Government and members of the House of Orange-Nassau, a Boeing 737 in BBJ version, Boeing Business Jet, is used, and the monarch continues to pilot it frequently, thus actively satisfying his interest in aviation. As was the case a few years ago, Willem-Alexander continues to fly as co-pilot on KLM flights operated on 737s, including those that currently connect Amsterdam and Barcelona in less than two hours. Passengers are never revealed that the co-pilot of their flight is the king, although sometimes some Dutch travelers recognize the co-pilot's voice when he addresses the passengers to give some information about the flight and, on the other hand, in the KLM crew room at Schiphol, no one is surprised to find the king preparing a day of flights with the assigned crew.
KLM in Barcelona
Laurent Perrier recalled yesterday KLM's good performance in recent times, with a global growth of 20% compared to 2022 data at this time of year. In the closest case, the Dutch company has transported one million passengers from Spain to Amsterdam. Of these, 340,000 have flown from or to the Catalan capital, which implies more than a third of the passengers transported in the six airports it flies to in Spanish territory.
Asunción Pérez, sales director for the Air France-KLM group, recalls a notable trend regarding the Dutch company in Barcelona: of travelers going from El Prat to Schiphol, only 25% do so point-to-point, while the remaining 75% use the Amsterdam hub to connect with other flights. The executive, well-versed in the markets, clarifies that many of these connections are to destinations in Scandinavia, although there is also interest in KLM's routes to several cities in Latin America and some Asian airports, in a mix of business, leisure, and also family traffic that fluctuates at different times of the year.
Museum seats
At the celebration, amidst works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Yayoi Kusama, or Jeff Koons, the airline showcased its two new products for intercontinental flights: the new world business cabin and premium comfort, an intermediate class between business and economy that is an increasingly demanded accommodation, as the general director for Spain and Portugal made sure to remind. "Passengers increasingly want more options, as the nature of each trip can be different," he said. Laurent Perrier was referring to passengers who, for example, departing from Barcelona to a destination in the United States or Asia via Amsterdam, might be on a business trip, alone, in business class, and those same travelers, when taking a family trip, with several people, can perfectly travel in a premium comfort seat, as it is a leisure or vacation trip, where perhaps it is not necessary to travel in the front part of the plane, although greater comfort is sought by paying a little more than in the economy or tourist class cabin.
KLM officials also recalled the company's commitment to environmental issues, whose improvement has always been a country's fixation. The measures are no longer only in matters such as work on new less polluting fuels or lower emissions from aircraft being incorporated into the fleet (the replacement of aircraft that precisely perform their European flights is yet to be decided), but also the sustainability criterion is applied in the new cabins, with lighter seats and reusable materials for the catering service.
Currently, the company offers five daily flights between both cities, 10 frequencies each day in 176-seat jets, figures very far from those of that start in 1953 when the capitals of the Netherlands and Catalonia were linked by a weekly flight in a turboprop of 40 seats… with an intermediate stop.