How We Flew
to the East and to the West



KLM Far East route
schedule

Around 1950, the Fokker aircraft had been replaced with Lockheed Constellation and Douglas DC-6.
These could make much longer hops much faster, but the trip from Curaçao or Jakarta to Amsterdam still took three or four days.


Now AMS-HML: From Amsterdam to Jakarta, formerly Batavia, ~1950.

Amsterdam Frankfurt-Zürich Roma	NEAR EAST Istanbul	Karachi Kandahar Kabul	Karachi Delhi-Calcutta Bangkok	Karachi Rangoon-Colombo Bangkok	Bangkok Singapore-Colombo Jakarta

Now CUR-AMS: From Curaçao to Amsterdam, ~1950.

Curaçao Havana	Havana Montreal or New York	New York or Montreal Newfoundland	Newfoundland (Iceland) Shannon or Glasgow	Shannon or Glasgow Amsterdam

Most maps are from a contemporary KLM Flying Dutchman/Vliegende Hollander flight booklet,
except for the Loftleidir North Atlantic map - the only I found one showing Iceland. Naturally.

Both routes knew a lot of alternates, but Iceland was never mentioned, except as a possible stop in the itinerary. The reason for this was that a Constellation did not carry enough fuel to make it with a safe margin all the way from Newfoundland to Shannon/Ireland or Prestwick/Scotland; the Super Connie had wing-tip fuel tanks. So the flight plan was over Iceland; which, flying the Great Circle, was not so much out of the way as it looks on these maps. If, at a certain point, there was enough fuel left, as confidently expected, Iceland was skipped.
The strangest thing about this trip is that we were taken by bus from Idlewild, now JFK, to La Guardia to continue our journey from there. I really can't imagine why.

How Loftleidir almost killed me.
In 1978 we flew Loftleidir Icelandic from Luxembourg to Nassau, Bahamas, and from there to Curaçao. This was the cheapest flight available, and you can bet all hippies knew about this. It was a pandemonium at Luxembourg airport. Many people had a lot of overweight luggage, and Loftleidir was well aware that, apart from the hassles and bad publicity, they would not be able to pay for it; so they just stowed it aboard. Trouble was, without really weighing it. (A KLM captain flying Paramaribo, Suriname - Amsterdam once had all the passengers deboarded and luggage unloaded to weigh it so he knew.)
The DC-8 duly made its take-off rotation and lifted off - only to drop right back on the runway. Really. Would I lie to you about a thing like this? Nothing for the captain to do but to continue the take-off, there was not enough runway left to abort it. Well, we made it and flew on to Shannon in Ireland.
This airport is a sad case. It was built to enormous proportions to accommodate those flights to Newfoundland for Constellations and Douglas DC-6s; I know it from those days. (It was the scene of a famous KLM crash.) Then, the jet age set in and nobody needed Shannon any more (just like Newfoundland, I presume). You walk around in these enormous empty halls with empty restaurants and empty shops. It must then have had pretty low landing rights, a good reason for the budget-conscious Loftleidir to use it.
Anyway, the DC-8 was absolutely fueled up to the gills to make it to Nassau from there, and the captain taxied all the way to the end of the runway with the two back wheels actually in the grass. Normally, they then crank up their engines, start the run, crank up the engines to take-off power, pick up speed, rotate and take off. But this guy jammed on the brakes and had the engines up to maximum power before releasing the brakes. Then, he forced the DC-8 to remain on the ground until the last possible moment; I couldn't see it from where I was sitting but my guess is with flaps fully extended. Well, we made it again; and the cockpit crew must have been as relieved as we were. Amazingly enough, it looked like hardly any other passenger had an inkling. I know too much; I have never been that scared on a flight before or since.

Not in the DC-3 Dakota when we had to film a stall, or in a Constellation when the motor started burning.
And more power to Douglas for their DC series - including the much-vilified DC-10, which I loved to fly in.

1934
First Summer Schedule

weekly service

Day	depart from	Stops	distance	total km
1-Thursday	Amsterdam	Halle Leipzig Budapest Athens	525 670 1115	2310
2-Friday	Athens	(Mersa-Matruh) Caïro	817 460	1277
3-Saturday	Caïro	Gaza Baghdad	348 955	1303
4-Sunday	Baghdad	Bushir Jask	785 805	1590
5-Monday	Jask	Karachi Jodhpur	953 615	1868
6-Tuesday	Jodhpur	Allahabad Calcutta	872 750	1622
7-Wednesday	Calcutta	(Akyab) Rangoon	578 500	1078
8-Thursday	Rangoon	Bangkok Alor Star Medan	580 900 370	1850
9-Friday	Medan	Palembang Batavia Bandung	975 480 106	1561
9 days				14159km

In winter the route went via Marseille for better weather conditions.
This added 500km to the distance, resulting in a 10-day trip.
The crew flew the next plane back; a return trip took them five weeks.



The Flight of the Snip

KLM's


To compare, the schedule for British Imperial Airways London-Calcutta, just over half the distance.

days	depart from	transportation	arrive at
1-Saturday	London	airplane	Paris
1-3 Sat-Monday	Paris	rail (33 hours)	Brindisi
3-Monday	Brindisi	sea plane	Athens
4-Tuesday	Athens	sea plane	Galilea
5-Wednesday	Galilea	airplane	Basra
6-Thursday	Basra	airplane	Jask
7-Friday	Jask	airplane	Karachi
7 days			7800km

Universal World Atlas By Rand McNally & Company. They're in the USA, so don't blame them for emphasizing North America a bit. (This is a good deal.)

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