HELLL YEAHHHHHH!!!

About KLM

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines , officially Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij NV , is the national airline of the Netherlands . KLM is headquartered in Amstelveen , with its main hub at nearby Amsterdam Schiphol Airport . It is part of the Air France-KLM alliance and a member of the SkyTeam airline alliance . Founded in 1919, KLM is the oldest airline in the world still operating under its original name and had 35,488 employees and a fleet of 122 aircraft (excluding subsidiaries ) in 2015. KLM operates scheduled passenger and cargo services to 145 destinations.
KLM MD-11 PH-KCK (which is what i made today)

History

In 1919, a young pilot lieutenant named Albert Plesman sponsored the ELTA air show in Amsterdam . The show was a great success; after it closed, several Dutch commercial interests planned to establish a Dutch airline, for which Plesman was nominated to head. In September 1919, Queen Wilhelmina granted KLM the founding status of "Royal" (" Koninklijke "). On October 7, 1919, eight Dutch entrepreneurs, including Frits Fentener van Vlissingen, founded KLM as one of the first commercial airlines. Plesman became its first administrator and director.

First flight

KLM's first flight took place on May 17, 1920. Jerry Shaw, KLM's first pilot, flew from Croydon Airport , London , to Amsterdam . The flight was operated by a leased De Haviland DH-16 Transport and Passenger aircraft, registered G-EALU, carrying two British journalists and several newspapers. In 1920, KLM carried 440 passengers and 22 tons of cargo. In April 1921, after a winter hiatus, KLM resumed its services using its own pilots and Fokker F.II and Fokker F.III aircraft. In 1921, KLM began scheduled services. KLM's first transcontinental flight took off on October 1, 1924. Its final destination was Jakarta (then known as 'Batavia'), Java, in the Dutch East Indies ; the flight used a Fokker F.VII with registration H-NACC and was piloted by Van der Hoop. In September 1929, regular scheduled services between Amsterdam and Batavia began. Until the outbreak of World War II in 1939, this was the world's longest scheduled service by aircraft . By 1926, the airline offered flights to Amsterdam , Rotterdam , Brussels , Paris , London , Bremen , Copenhagen , and Malmö , using primarily Fokker F.II and Fokker F.III aircraft.
Fokker F.II KLM at H-NABC at the museum

The KLM Douglas DC-2 KLM Royal Dutch Airlines aircraft transited Rambang Airport on the east coast of Lombok Island after finishing second in the MacRobertson Air Race from RAF Mildenhall, England, to Melbourne in 1934.
McDonnell Douglas DC-2 KLM PH-AJH

In 1930, KLM carried 15,143 passengers. Douglas DC-2 aircraft were introduced on Batavia services in 1934. KLM's first test transatlantic flights were between Amsterdam and Curaçao in December 1934 using the Fokker F.XVIII "Snip". The airline's first Douglas DC-3 aircraft were delivered in 1936; these replaced the DC-2s on the route via Batavia to Sydney. KLM was the first airline to serve Manchester's new Ringway airport, beginning in June 1938. KLM was the only civil airline to receive Douglas DC-5s ; the airline used two of them in the West Indies and sold two to the East Indies government, and was therefore the only airline to operate all Douglas 'DC' models besides the DC-1.

About MD-11

The McDonnell Douglas MD-11 is an American trijet wide-body airliner which was manufactured by McDonnell Douglas and later by Boeing. The MD-11 is the largest trijet ever built.
Following DC-10 development studies, the MD-11 program was launched on December 30, 1986. Assembly of the first prototype began on March 9, 1988. Its maiden flight occurred on January 10, 1990, and it achieved Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification on November 8. The first delivery was to Finnair on December 7 and it entered service on December 20, 1990.
MD-11 Finnair OH-LGB

It retains the basic trijet configuration of the DC-10 with updated General Electric CF6-80C2 or Pratt & Whitney PW4000 turbofan engines. Its wingspan is slightly larger than the DC-10 and it has winglets. Its maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) is increased by 14% to 630,500 lb (286 t). Its fuselage is stretched by 11% to 202 ft (61.6 m) to accommodate 298 passengers in three classes over a range of up to 7,130 nautical miles [nmi] (13,200 km; 8,210 mi). It features a glass cockpit that eliminates the need for a flight engineer.

How MD-11 was grounded ?

On November 8, 2025, days after a deadly crash in Louisville, Kentucky, the FAA issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive grounding all MD-11 aircraft. The planes cannot fly again until they are inspected and any necessary repairs are completed. The FAA said the directive was issued because the same safety issue could affect other aircraft of the same design. As of November 2025, the National Transportation Safety Board was investigating the crash.
UPS 2976 crash captured on a truck dashcam